Low Hanging Fruit Awaits

Addis Ababa is believed to be home to 4.6 million residents. The growth of capital cities of the National Regional States such as Bahir Dar, Hawassa, Adama and Mekelle is also unprecedented and disproportionately unbalanced with their carrying capacities.

Rural-urban migration is putting additional pressure on these cities due to a soaring influx of people, who expect better living standards than they can hope for in small towns and villages.

One of the basic social services which fall short of coping with this unplanned outburst of cities is transport.

Mobility is how humanity has managed to improve the efficiency of resource allocation. A farmer who produces food brings his produce to cities and exchanges it for clothes with a tailor.

If there were no mobility, the farmer would have to make his clothes; and the tailor cultivates his crops. Each cannot specialise; there will be efficiency loss in the economy.

It is not uncommon to see long queues of commuters in the streets of Addis during rush hours waiting for public transport. Even the light train does not appear to attenuate the shortage of transport in the city. Though most urban centres have public transport, it is far from being enough.

Another and the worst facet of the problem is in rural areas, where more than 80pc of Ethiopians live. In most villages, walking is the only mode of transport. Farmers cannot get agricultural inputs quickly; nor can they bring their products to market easily.

Health and agricultural extension workers cannot assist the poor on time. Students have to spend hours walking to and from school each day.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation of a student walking to and from school for two hours a day would show that that student will have spent nearly five months – day and night – of his or her life walking by the time they complete tenth grade. This is time wasted, indeed life utterly wasted!

The economic loss disguised in the time spent walking, and queuing, may amount in the order of millions, if not more, every year.

If roads are the blood vessels of an economy, then people, commodities and services are the nutrients and oxygen which should be delivered to the cells so that the economy can thrive. The welfare loss is even beyond imagination. Everyone suffers!

Given the depth of the problem, the practical difficulties of finding a solution only from big projects commissioned by the government and the millions of rural youth who can quickly adapt to style, the first promising solution that could potentially come to a rescue is using bicycles.

Admittedly, the devil is in the detail. So, the ‘how’ part of the discussion, is always where the slope gets steeper. Even so, this sounds like a little hanging fruit ripe to be harvested by the government, investors, share companies, higher education institutions and individuals.

It is unfortunate that some resources are found in bulk quantities not where they are needed the most. Bikes are probably such resources. In the West, people use bikes as luxurious means of enjoying another lifestyle, of staying fit and having fun.

Metropolitan cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam have the highest ‘Copenhagenization index’, for they are the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. It is spectacular to see so many commuters riding in the streets of Copenhagen every morning and awe-inspiring to notice thousands and thousands of bikes parking in Amsterdam’s central station. They have excess; we have none!

One obvious, all too obvious reason is that these countries are rich, and they can afford to have so many bikes. But it is puzzling to see that developing countries in general and our country, in particular, is not yet cognizant of the potential that a bike could save a typical student so many months of his life.

That bicycle transport can make our cities less congested, more beautiful and highly accessible, and try to produce and popularise them. The payoff of investing in bikes as a means of transport is so multifaceted that everyone would win.

The general public wins directly as they can reach where they want to do business on time, and indirectly as the overall mobility of resources and people makes transactions take place faster and more frequently with more spending and active and lively economic prospects.

The government wins directly as it solves one of the gravest problems, which would otherwise continue to create nuisance in all other development endeavours. The tax gains, efficiency, equity and overall well-being of the people are also likely to make a government that has normal senses feel happy.

Ethiopia, being an advocate of climate change mitigation and working on its climate resilient green economy, can win in this front too by harnessing the smokeless, ‘human-powered, single-track vehicle’.

This has the potential of being a low-cost, low-carbon strategy, and is a win-win-win solution for everyone involved.

The good news is that innovators are making bamboo-framed bikes, and Ethiopia is rich in bamboo trees. The only thing Ethiopians need to follow their Ghanaian friends might be to create an ‘ethiobamboobikes.org’, like the famous ‘ghanabamboobikes.org’ which may be worth visiting to get inspired.

I believe that if a bicycle factory has to be established, it has to be set in Ethiopia. There is an immense market as most of the population is youth, and alternative transport services are either desperately inefficient or utterly absent.

It is certainly sustainable, as there are even bigger markets in neighbouring countries and a labour-intensive, environmentally-friendly production system could be chosen to keep prices lower so that people at lower segments of the income distribution, both in Ethiopia and other countries, can afford it. To the extent that this helps Ethiopia cut its CO2 emissions, it can make money in the carbon market as well.

For investors and share companies that might want to grab the opportunity, it is worth pointing out that once the factory is established, diversification, segmentation and differentiation could be used to increase its profitability.

With Ethiopia’s favourable climate condition, sporting events and bike tours may be used to create additional demand. It is futile to try to list all the advantages of this business opportunity, but ‘supply creates its own demand’, and so the more creative those involved in promoting their products and service, the more sustainably they can prosper.

For individuals who are curious and adventurous, watching do-it-yourself (DIY) videos may be great kick starters. A Cambodian man recently made and flew his plane by watching YouTube videos. In fact, the subject of using the Internet to learn what you want and replicate products made elsewhere warrants a separate and thorough discussion.

So far, it sounds so good. What are the challenges that have held us back and may continue to do so? It will be sheer naivety to claim that stumbling on bicycle transport at such a large scale as to help millions of Ethiopians benefit from this venture will be free of challenges.

Though the production cost of the bikes per unit may be low and can potentially be reduced further, the preconditions for using bikes in our big and crowded cities may require not only commitment but also cooperation.

Our cities do not have separate lanes for bikers; nor is there a proper traffic control system. Above all, and honestly but apologetically, many of us lack responsibility and often break our own rules. When parents send their kids to school by bike, they need to feel secure and safe. This will develop only over time and through trial.

Some cities might have a comparative advantage over others in their natural setting and their plans. Bahir Dar and Hawassa may be good examples. The roads required for bikes are not so big, and simple pavements may be prepared and appropriate signs put so that they are dedicated only for bike users.

With continuous awareness creation and strict enforcement of rules, we may see millions of commuters heading to uplift their nation out of poverty toward even greener growth every day.

Some seemingly small ideas may have far-reaching effects; action remains to be the difference between today’s problems and the aforementioned triple-win solution waiting to be fetched.


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