Riding into the future – on electric bikes

How an electric bicycle company is collaborating with the oil sector to try to revolutionise transport in Uganda

(Karaa)

The bicycle has long been a sign of success in rural Uganda. While the last few decades have seen many more cars, and the rise of motorcycle riders - called ‘boda bodas’ - who transport people and goods in the big cities, the reach of the bicycle has not been eclipsed.

Now, however, a local company is seeking to introduce electric bikes to the country and hopes that this will help transform the lives of people in rural areas who are delivering milk, bananas and other farm products to the small neighbouring towns that act as collection centres.

Geofrey Mutabazi, who founded the company Karaa producing the bikes, says they will provide an environmentally friendly and zero-carbon alternative to the petrol-fuelled vehicles presently choking many of the country’s roads.

“More than 80 per cent of first mile trips in agriculture are done using manual bicycles,” he said. “These bicycles are so heavily loaded that they are difficult to pedal.” Moreover, in most rural areas receiving a small package from a town centre can double its cost if it is transported on boda bodas or by car into the countryside. “You order a small package that costs 10,000 Uganda shillings but the delivery cost is 5,000”. In such a situation many people may opt to walk even long distances to carry the items themselves.

In order to fulfil his commercial objectives, Karaa is now hoping to collaborate with the country’s new oil sector to expand his business. Uganda is in the middle of an oil and gas revolution as oil is pumped for the first time from the country’s Albertine Graben region.

During the next 25 years, it has been calculated that this development will provide a boost of more than $40bn to the Ugandan economy and the extraction companies involved have been required by the government to make sure that its economic impact is felt as wide as possible.

The oil development in Uganda is not without its controversies, with concern about the damage critics warn it risks doing in Murchison Falls National Park where much of the oil is being pumped from. However, the entrepreneur says he sees it as providing a commercially promising opportunity for companies like himself to get the seed investment they need to get going and is now in discussion with one of the country’s oil companies, Total Energies, on how they can work together.

Uganda made the prototypical leap into electric early when it launched its first electric car and later buses with a government aided company Kiira Motors. However, buses and taxis that move people and goods from the rural countryside have remained combustion engines.

Mr Mutabazi says that it is his hope that bringing the bikes to rural areas will help revitalize communities there as it will mean people are able to get themselves and their goods faster and easier to small towns.

In recent years frustration with rural poverty has driven many people to abandon their land in Uganda’s countryside or sell it to move the cities. There many end up in slums. “Hopefully many will stay on or near the land and their ancestral homes where the real work for the climate is happening with the planting of trees and tending to the vegetation, he said.

The company’s main product is its light delivery bicycle, which he is easily serviceable and designed for African roads. It has a 40 mile range that is expandable to 75 miles, a 20mph top speed, and is capable of carrying a load of 27kg. There is also a larger model that is capable of carrying a load of 100kg.

“Electric bicycles may be simple, but they continue the conversation about the role of technology in changing lives as well as in engaging ordinary people on the subject of carbon pollution and the climate,” Mr Mutabazi said. “When the option of LPG gas as an alternative to wood or charcoal for cooking is presented to them – there will be less resistance because they would have experienced what technology can do to their lives.”