Invest In People

After settling into Chipata, I realized that I really love the whole bike culture here. Bicycles are used as taxis, transport for household goods and they are even used to transport items as large as sheets of steel roofing and as heavy as large bags of charcoal. It’s great to be able to walk to the main road, point in any direction and someone with a bike and a padded carrier will swing by and take you wherever you want to go. The price is usually somewhere between 1,000 to 5,000 Kwacha (or about 20 cents to a dollar).

Biking past the road side market

Just last week I brought my own bicycle to Chipata and decided to bike out to Chinjala to meet an agro-agent I’m working with. When I was heading out alone I began to notice different things. I saw how much bicycle traffic there actually was. I was  trying to dodge bicycles speeding up to beat the robots (traffic lights). I was also dodging bicycles who were slowing down to drop people off at the road-side market. A taxi driver told me that this is a fairly new phenomenon. “These bicycle taxis, I don’t know where these people come from, but they started about 5 years ago.”

Avoiding bicycles, traffic and pedestrians. I understand taking a photo while doing the above is dangerous

There is a fairly good infrastructure here to support bicycles. Everywhere in town were dozens of little shops (4 wooden poles and a thatched roof) with tools and pumps to bring your bicycle back into shape. Out in the rural areas there were still shops along the dirt road the entire way. When my handle bars became lose and practically fell off, I was also able to veer into a farmer’s plot and ask him for help since every farmer has the tools (and hospitality) to fix a bicycle in need.

Repairing a Bicycle in Chinjala (20km West of Chipata)

The popularity of bicycles here in Chipata and the Eastern regions of Zambia are a stark contrast to other places in Zambia.  Bicycles lose their popularity the further West and closer to Lusaka I travel.

I feel that a few things that facilitated this market are related to:

• Infrastructure
• Access
• Culture
• Proximity to markets
• And a niche customer need

Infrastructure:

Some roads here are paved, and the majority have wide shoulders that a bicycle can easily turn into to avoid the large trucks and fast cars that drive by. Rural areas are also have some hard gravel and dirt roads that are passable by bicycle and difficult for vehicles.

Access:

Bicycles in Chipata are cheap. With one glance you can see that there is one bicycle that has the dominant market share: Eagle. These are about ZK500,000 and are supplied by the large Eagle bicycle factory here in Chipata. Almost every store has one on sale.

Their popularity has set the standard of bicycle parts and knowledge in the entire district. The design is simple and can be repaired easily by anyone. Parts can be found in almost every hub in the district. Tools to repair bicycles are within a walk away from everyone’s home.

Culture:

Bicycle taxis are accepted as a cultural norm here. It’s passed the tipping point where it’s almost strange not to hop on a bicycle taxi when they’re so available and so cost effective. However, if I was approached by a bicycle taxi in Lusaka, I would be incredibly suspicious of this person and wondering if he was out of his mind.

I feel that the familiarity of the bicycle culture can attribute to the spread of their popularity geographically. I hear (but haven’t confirmed) that the use of bicycle taxis began in Malawi and is spreading Westward.

Proximity to Markets:

Outward from Chipata, you can reach many town hubs with only about 50km of bicycling. In Kalanje, which is 50km West of Chipata, people can be seen bicycling all the way to the Malawian border, which is an additional 15km East of Chipata, to import goods. There is a large variety of markets that are close enough to be accessible by bicycle making bicycle based trade very attractive.

Customer Demand:

Everyone in Chipata needs cheap modes of transportation. Bicycles can get anywhere and without the hassle of fuel and licensing fees. With a lack of mini-buses and affordable “on demand” local transport, bicycles serve many people’s needs.

For bicycle taxie, I believe the same factors apply. When using mini-buses for local transportation, their availability is far too sporadic. When using regular taxis, the cost becomes to high. Additionally, these taxis are attractive  because to purchase a bicycle can be a hassle. After paying the ZK 500,000 it has to be stored and protected from theft and it also has to be maintained.

Bicycle taxis provide a hassle free and cheap mode of local transportation. This fits with what I’ve been told about the whole market: that Malawi was the source of this business. It fits because the cost to hire a regular taxi is much higher and overall poverty is more prevalent in Malawi.

Racing West down the dirt road towards Chinjala on my Zambike

Bicycles are Just Awesome:

Bicycles are an affordable, culturally accepted, and versatile mode of transportation. The infrastructure and the amount of people who are now making a living using bicycles and others who are making a living supporting their needs is pretty amazing. All people are benefiting from this: the small scale remote farmer has independent access to far more services and markets than ever before, people who live in town have access to affordable transit, others have more opportunities to generate income through providing bicycle services, even others have more opportunities buying from and selling to a larger market, and everyone has a little bit of a break from breathing the exhaust of vehicles that would fail any emissions test back home. I’m pretty excited to see how this whole market and industry grows over the next few years in Zambia.