Bicycles for Africa

In most of the world, bicycles are utility vehicles, that is they are used for commuting, shopping, and for the pick up and delivery of packages. In Europe, Africa and Asia the postal workers use bicycles to deliver the mail, or groceries, and the social and health care workers find bicycling a good way to get around town.

Automobiles and trucks are too expensive to purchase and operate, but bicycles are relatively inexpensive to maintain and the energy to power a bicycle comes from feeding the cyclist. So for organizations and individuals looking for ways to aid a developing country and its people donating bicycles is a natural. Church groups, and charitable organizations all over Europe collect used bicycles, fix them up, and ship them off to Africa as a way to help people get a transportation.

Bicycle Magazine which fills most of its pages with advertising for expensive recreational bicycles, and articles on how to ride faster, faster and still faster has a social service project called Bike Town. Bike Town supplies free new bikes to people both in the USA and in Africa. Then they run human interest stories on the new riders. The U.S. riders gain health and discover the pleasures of using a bike for commuting and recreation. The Africans stories include the women's movement outreach organizer who is able to get out to remote villages and extend her organizing. The BikeTown project targets AIDS outreach workers and supplies them with new bikes. The nurse who can now visit many more people needing her services at home. The student who can now work his way through school making deliveries. About half of the Americans who get free bikes become utility riders (shopping, getting around town, commuting) while many save their bikes for the recreational ride on weekends. All the Africans become utility riders, in addition to shopping and commuting, not a few are able to begin a small business, and all are able to be more productive in their work a day lives.

I was inspired, and was thinking that this was a social service project I might introduce to liberal churches. It would be a Heifer Project for vegetarians. But then I read that Africans would prefer to manufacture their own bicycles, to many of the American and Europeans used bikes are unsuited for the unpaved roads of Africa, and having a single standard of manufacturing would facilitate spare parts supply and training users in repair technique.

Africa needs bikes, the easiest way to get them to Africa is for voluntary organizations to collect used bikes and fix them up and ship them in mixed lots to distribution points. A better way for Africa might be for voluntary organizations to raise money to buy specially designed utility bicycles with tough frames, wheels and tires, with coaster brakes and no fancy gearing. These could be manufactured in Africa, South Africa has the industrial base to do this now.

How do churches do social service projects? And for what purpose? If we wish to aid a developing country perhaps we need to think twice before shipping used bikes that were built for American recreational riders.