Bicycle enterprise.

The following are my thoughts on bicycle-based enterprise thus far. I also encourage you to visit flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/27342523@N06/sets/72157606002071374/) where I've posted my version of a “Worldbike” and will soon post other miscellaneous component designs. At flickr you can use the comment function to start a discussion of the designs. I'm certainly asking for feedback and even some direct advice on things like low-cost suspension. Pipe up bike designers!

The first step in beginning any enterprise is identifying an opportunity. Therefore it is important to identify the categories of opportunity that utility bicycles present. I see two categories: the first being load carrying, the second being mobile services. As a load carrier, a bicycle is often the right combination of purchase cost, carrying capacity, upkeep expense, size, agility, and speed for the task at hand. The opportunity in the second category is the bike's ability to add value to traditional services by making those services mobile (think ice cream carts, paperboys, and mini-mart corner stores). In places where cheap and easy transport is less taken for granted as it is in wealthy parts of the U.S., services that come to you instead of you going them have increased value. Here in Nairobi for example there are traveling knife sharpeners, vegetable vendors every 10 meters, butchers, furniture makers, and cyber cafes on every corner. In an environment like this “going” shopping almost becomes obsolete.

One of the bicycles designed by our predecessor Practical Action working in Kibera with Soweto Youth Group two years ago was a mobile food kiosk (pictured). Outfitted with a stove, this bike could, for example, deliver hot food to multiple construction sites during the time sensitive window of the lunch hour whereas someone on foot would have a more limited market (this is the same principle employed by the mobile milkman of old). The “Worldbike” I've designed also brings portability to services that require power. I've imagined a portable knife sharpener, battery charger, food sheller, food grinder (like peanuts), a lathe and/or drill dress that can travel to the work site, a blender (a la www.bikeblender.com), a juicer, a sewing machine, a washing machine, (apply your creativity here).

One of the things revealed in surveys that were conducted amongst purchasers of the Worldbike Bigga Boda in Kisumu, is that the bikes tended not to be employed in a single specialized service. For example they might have been used in the morning to deliver bread, in the afternoon to carry passengers, and in the evening to pick up the kids from school and run errands for the family. As a result I concluded that a bicycle with a diversity of applications will produce the most value. My Worldbike design is intended to fulfill that most common employment of a bicycle which is transport while at very little extra cost making the bicycle also upgradeable to a capable power source. In this way I imagine the bicycle creating value for its owner all day long. Again, start the discussion here:

http://flickr.com/photos/27342523@N06/sets/72157606002071374/

Frame Layout:

1. SideLoaders: Talking with members of the youth group about their trash collection business I learned an important lesson. Currently the group hauls mixed waste to their collection site and then sorts it for compostable material, recyclables, and landfill-bound waste. When I asked why they give themselves that messy sorting job versus asking the households to sort the material, it was explained that house space is too valuable to take up with multiple trash buckets. When asked about leaving the buckets outside, I was told they would get stolen. This helped drive home the fact that a bicycle used by a poor person needs to be stowable which means that it needs to fold into a small package. Bikes that are also narrow (hence the attraction of the two-wheeled design) fit better through crowded streets and tight neighborhoods. I'm far from the first person to be attracted to the folding design as can be seen from the following old photos showing Worldbike founder Ross Evans in South Africa with a side-loading bike. My design however seeks to eliminate the interference caused by the chains that support the platform.

2. Kickstand: A solid centerstand kickstand is a must for any cargo bike as a stable platform is needed for loading and unloading and simply for keeping a laden bike upright. Here I took inspiration from the black mamba kickstand design. On my bike, the kickstand is also critical for lifting the rear wheel when using the bike as a power source.

3. Implement Rack: The top rack is a standard platform for load carrying but can dually be used for implement mounting and as a stable bench top. The following pictures show how to attach a pulley to the spokes with two pieces of tire and plate steel thus converting any wheel into a drivewheel/flywheel.
   

4. Secondary Seat Tube: In order to use the bike as a power source, the rider needs to be able to turn around and access the rear of the bike while pedaling. Simply moving the seatpost to an alternative position allows for this. Correspondingly, moving the handlebars or another t-shaped bar to the seat tube provides the needed hand support.

The one problem with building one-off load-hauling bikes like this in Kenya is the availability of strong wheels and forks. A connection I made last week to an Indian importer might provide a source for small quantities but the general rule of thumb is that if you want parts from India or China the minimum quantities start at 100,000 units. Realistically, if a bike like this is to make a real impact then it needs to be mass produced in China where all the specs can be met, materials are cheap, and productivity is high.

Man and machine.

Most of you folks out there taking the detour through worldbike.org have one interest in common. Bikes! So let's talk about them. I've been gathering my observations over my first three weeks here in Kenya. This entry is intended to be an introduction to the Kenyan cycling scene.

I've never seen anyone dressed quite like the fellow on the left but the way he's employing his bicycle is quite common. Humorously he was in a bit of a hurry to get to the market and though being quite friendly never broke stride except for this one moment when I snapped his picture. When I stopped to dig in my bag to get out pictures and then again for my camera he kept jetting ahead. I would come scooting up beside him holding my bike in one hand, pictures of Worldbike's past work in the other, dodging traffic, and trying to communicate in my very broken Swahili. Thankfully I wasn't chewing gum at the time or I probably would have ended up on the pavement tangled in my bike while he soared off obliviously to that place that was drawing him so urgently.

The bike that he's pushing is commonly called a Black Mamba in Kenya. That's in reference to both its color (always black) and its reputation for safety. Despite quite a variety of makers, they all look almost alike and have been made in India and China since the world began. These are the same bikes as China's quintessential Flying Pigeon (I don't know what other types of pigeon there are) bicycles. They are lugged framed single-speeds with cottered cranks, rod brakes, 28” wheels, a big centerstand kickstand, and fenders (this is 1930s technology). They often have double top tubes and are retrofitted domestically with a brace (of questionable effectiveness) on the front fork and a wide rear rack. They cost between $40 and $90 and typically must be immediately taken to a mechanic after purchase so that they can be reassembled “properly”. Most mechanics work on the ground with a tool box or sack full of broken bits and pieces of bikes and some exceptionally shoddy tools. The tools of choice are a hammer, a piece of railroad rail used as an anvil, and pliers. Incredible things are done with these implements with my favorite undoubtedly being the breaking and reassembling a chain using a nail as the driving pin. I could never be so deft.

Despite their similar appearances, the black mambas are different. Brand names like Neelam, made by the Indian company Seth Industries, are accompanied by the sub-titles “Super Strong” or “Heavy Duty”. These aren't just marketing hype, the bikes indeed are stronger and that is a result of the thicker walled tubes in the frame and fork construction. Wheels also are made to varying degrees of super-strongness with varying rim weights and spoke counts. The brand Raja is the cheapest and considered bottom of the barrel in terms of strength. Given the strength to weight ratio of these bikes in general, my impression is that the steel used in their construction is pretty low-grade (I'm thinking maybe from minimally-refined melted scrap). My other impression is that the motivation to continue producing these bikes is that the production facilities were paid off long ago and the marginal cost of their manufacture is next to nothing. Without anyone making any serious marketing push for a more modern bicycle, these bikes are enjoying both a default appeal and a very well established distribution network.

That being said, the mountain bike is making inroads. There are many more on the roads in Nairobi than there were when I was here even two years ago. Unfortunately, the venerable mountain bike (highly appropriate technology for the terrain) is receiving Walmart style treatment. Here are mountain bikes at Kenya's Walmart on steroids, Nakumatt (formerly Nakuru Mattress). The bikes are cheap (which is inevitable) but more importantly, like Walmart bikes, are poorly assembled and maintained. Decent tools and quality parts are not available. The result, I fear, is that a machine with great promise is never achieving its potential. What that means for its reputation over the coming years, I don't know.

Culturally, the bicycle is considered outdated and backwards technology used only by those who can't afford better. This of course creates an ironic and frustrating duality as 1) parts of the developed world back-pedal away from the automobile and awaken to the wonderful transformative power bicycles have on city spaces and life quality and 2) parts of the developing world make irreversible infrastructure decisions that exclude bicycles and alienate public transit (check out www.itdp.com and Bogotá, Columbia www.ebbc.org/?q=node/1218). All is not lost in Kenya though as an excellent opportunity for global cycling solidarity presents itself. I've been told by a (highly-biased) source that some members of the Nairobi middle-class are going through that traffic congestion induced metamorphosis and seeing bicycles as a choice mode of transport and exercise. I've also been told that for the first time a few members of the government are paying attention to bicycles for transportation. The biggest hurdle though is the extremely strong perception that bicycles are very dangerous. I suspect that this is true for the passive cyclist (the one who expects traffic to play the active role in avoiding collisions) as the congestion creates quite a competitive atmosphere. Personally, as an “active” cyclist (someone who rides like a kayaker, thriving on a kinetic and unpredictable travel corridor) Nairobi traffic is incredibly fun and non-threatening. The drivers are very alert and responsive (and generally not moving). There certainly are no bike lanes so cycling is best done amongst the vehicles instead of pinched on the shoulders.

Kenyan cycling doesn't have is a voice and a presence: what I see as the two arms of the cycling movement in the U.S. There are no Kenyan critical masses or messenger traffic thrashers or versions of the Thunderhead Alliance or League of American Bicyclists. From my observation, cyclists here have complaints but they don't have a cause. But they could... I sense simmering potential. The beauty of the cyclist personality is that it is sculpted by adversity. Cyclists are an ambitious, go against the tide, idealistic, forthright bunch. They are always ready to boil over given the chance. Here are my friends Lemash who deals in second-hand bikes and Toto who is currently organizing a Nairobi to Mombasa ride to raise money to purchase books. They are members of the underground Nairobi club cycling scene and will talk your ear off. Another friend, George (not pictured), is a 30-year veteran of Kenyan cycling, raced pro in Europe, coaches and promotes youth cycling, knows well the corruption that hobbles pro cycling in Kenya, is your man for rickshaws, ... The way everyone talks, they're all ready to be part of a movement, they just need a little bit of solidarity with the international cycling community to know the power of what they have to say. Let this be my invitation to the media to come here and cover the budding Kenyan cycling scene. It's a fascinating untold story.

But back to the bikes. If you want to buy a quality new bike in Kenya I know of only two places. They are both owned by Indians (the people with the import connections) and both are ungodly expensive. The real option are second-hand bikes. These are machines that are gleaned from scrap yards and landfills in the developed world and sent abroad. It sounds like a fantastic academic research project following this commodity chain. The explanation given to me is that brokers set up relationships with developed world discard points, pay some nominal fee per bike, put them all in a container and then, just like used clothes that are sold by the bale, sell the full container to another broker abroad. These bikes are then parted out to smaller dealers like Lemash. Right now the bikes in Kenya mostly come from landlocked Uganda (go figure). Looking at Lemash's stock it's pretty clear that these are bikes that were designated “not worth the money to fix” in their country of origin. They're good bikes but they need the serious work that his very talented fundi (employed mechanic) Vincent is busy applying to them. However, without spare parts available, there is often an inevitable “good enough” threshold that can't be overcome. Additionally, without tools available, Vincent is left with a toolbox only slightly surpassing the one described above.

Getting there.

The following are a series of snapshots that I wrote down during my travel from Boston to Nairobi. Over the next couple days I will work to catch up with the first two weeks of my experience here. This seems like enough for now.

I used British Airways' online seat selection tool a week before departure and sat in an exit row just behind first class on both flights. Advice to any international traveler: this is a must. I could have done yoga in the leg room. I wrote the following at the time: No joke. We're right here at the red braided rope. I mean this is first class... okay maybe grade B first class. But heck we can almost stretch our feet into first class. I think that makes us first class by association. I mean we're not the private leasers of footrests and slippers. And we don't get that supreme satisfaction of closing our personal, individually-operated screen in our neighbor's face but certainly I can put feet on my comrade the steward's seat and exit a conversation by way of my mp3 player.

Interesting how money is the great equalizer. I wonder what would happen if Rosa Parks sat in the front of the airplane. Maybe they should have just had a fare gradient in Montgomery. That would have saved us the need for civil rights. I say that ironically of course and as reinforcement of the fact that economic class is today the most relevant classification of people; more than nationality, race, religion, etc. I.e. there are more similarities in the lifestyles between a rich, black, baptist, American and a rich, Hindu, Indian than between two white Christians who live on different sides of the tracks in the same American city. Or, in the words of one of my professors, “The Third World exists in the First World and visa versa”.

Every meal creates your own personal landfill. By the time I've finished it's like the total mass of the meal has somehow increased. I can hardly contain all the trash on the tray with which it was served.

So many distinct layers of clouds that it seems we could descend forever. That the plane is the only vessel we have ever known. Adrift in a vaporous sea there are no destinations, no landmarks, no geography. Here we are always nowhere. The clouds below us now are thin and look like oil deposited on an invisible surface slowly spreading in gentle puddles... and now the ground finally appears, in the mist and haze it is like first land appearing through a fog. Like something we have never known but instantly recognized as something we need... and then the wing rose, wiping the slate of sky, and then dipping again to exhibit a dappled curtain of puffy sky with the morning sun nestled warmly in its folds. Despite the fact that I am looking perfectly horizontal the lack of contrast makes the sky appear a vertical canvas.

Our landing was instantly and authoritatively reviewed by a four-year-old's, “weeeeee,” resounding from somewhere in the cabin.

London. My watch says midnight but the sun seemingly has broken its restraints and raced ahead in over-exuberance. Like an old-friend that could never be turned away, its presence on the eastern horizon is comforting though perhaps not timely.

Watching Heathrow airport awaken was the perfect send-off to reinforce my convictions as why I found myself traveling to Kenya to pursue livelihoods for the poor based on cargo-bicycle design. In college I was struck to learn that advertising is always targeted at people with money. It seems obvious enough but the corollary is that the capitalist world itself is designed for people with money. It means almost all of the great minds and almost all of the phenomenal resources of this world are working for only those people who have money. This was delightfully driven home by an exhibit at the Smithsonian last year titled “Design for the Other 90%”. Worldbike's work was on display and I've been greatly inspired by reading the exhibit catalog. Sitting next to a Porsche and a Ferrari in Heathrow that morning watching the shops open I wrote: Each one opens like the pages of Vogue magazine with open arms and multi-million dollar marketing budgets to welcome the world's jet set. Just imagine if those showcase lights instead allowed poor rural children to learn to read at night and all that bottled water was inexpensive water purifying technology that provide one billion people with access to safe drinking water. What a prosperous, just, and sustainable world we could live in.

3:00am at the YMCA located adjacent to downtown Nairobi's business district- can't sleep. I guess my body is taking the scenic route; setting its own pace still somewhere out over the Atlantic. That's alright, I'm not quite ready to receive it.

My plane arrived about 9:30 the other night. That's 30 hours in Kenya so far. The soft cone of the mosquito net draped over my bed in the artificial urban twilight reminds me of a funnel spider's web. The hazy quality it lends to the narrow room matches the scent of exhaust and dust and the smoke of cooking and trash fires that lingers even at this time of night.

Coming up.... the project gets started, a description of Nairobi, thoughts on what constitutes good design, and my experiences with homemaking in a foreign country. Oh, and pictures! For now: the corner of Nairobi downtown out the YMCA window and Patrick my neighborhood rickshaw driver in Jamhuri II. This is neat because rickshaws are a really rare species here. Becoming more so if you can see the condition of his.

My other pictures are posted here: http://flickr.com/photos/27342523@N06/

As I go along some will be incorporated into the blog where I'll tell you more about them.

What's begun.

The project that I am managing is a one year cooperative undertaking between Worldbike and UN-Habitat. The majority of the financial support for the project comes from a UN trust fund dedicated to investment in water and sanitation solutions for the poor. As a result, the primary goal of our work will be to catalyze bicycle-based livelihoods that will improve the accessibility of water and sanitation services. This is a more limiting project environment than Worldbike's past initiatives where the focus has been open-ended enterprise creation, but the results will be no less rewarding.

Our activities are organized to complement two ongoing UN programs, one in the Kibera slums of Nairobi (second largest slum in Africa) and one in the Mirera-Karagita slum of Naivasha.

See the lake to the northwest of Nairobi. That's Lake Naivasha, about an hour and half away on decent roads climbing and then descending into the rift valley (i.e. it's a lot warmer their than in Nairobi at 5000ft). That's where the town is. A huge quanity of fresh flowers bound for Europe come out of Naivasha. The strain on the water resources is considerable enough to put lake put the lakes existence in jeopardy. Mt. Kenya at 17,000fr is just north of Embu. For a complete map, go to: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/kenya_pol88.jpg

In Kibera we will be a micro-component to the massive, long-term, and controversial Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme and in Mirera-Karagita we will complement a smaller and newer program focused on improving the delivery of water, sanitation, hygiene, and environmental management services.

Our project will begin in Kibera before moving on to Mirera-Karagita several months from now. In Kibera, Worldbike's input is intended to be a seed given life through a partnership with Soweto Youth Group. This well-respected organization with individuals probably ranging from 15-28 years old will be the entrepreneurial body that generates the designs and business models that Worldbike will advise and launch using the UN-Habitat funding. Excitingly, our work is actually piggybacking on work done by Practical Action and UN-Habitat a couple years ago. From my understanding, Practical Action produced a number of successful non-motorized transport vehicles in Kayole and with a sliver of leftover funding were able to conduct a pilot project with Soweto Youth Group to build single iterations of a mobile food kiosk, a trailer for hauling solid waste, and a trailer for ambulance services. The brief effort was apparently intended to test interest in these non-motorized technologies. That interest was reportedly significant and is one reason that UN-Habitat has brought on Worldbike to follow up. I will talk more about the efforts in Mirera-Karagita when that time approaches.

More interesting than the organizational details is the way we understand our relationship to the populations of people who have invited us to work with them. The following is my conceptualization of the major problem faced by the world poor followed by how I think Worldbike offers an effective solution.

The lives of most Kenyans (and most people in the world) is marked by instability in one or more of the basic elements re quired for economic ascendancy in a capitalist, technological world. This includes instability in income/employment, health, access to education, available savings, family size, access to communication technologies, access to information, quality of shelter, etc. Imagine for a moment that you are a slum dweller vending roasted peanuts by the roadside. You manage to pay school fees for one of your children and have the wherewithal to save a couple cents (Kenyan shillings) a day with the hope of buying an ice cream cart with which you can ply the main roads selling to wealthy motorists. The ambition is a good one and is the upward mobility trajectory that we love to imagine for the poor. Unfortunately on the way to those greener pastures are dozens of rickety bridges each with a menacing troll underneath. These represent instability and its consequences. The first bridge is family size: a sister dies from HIV and you must now take in her four kids. The next is market variability: the price of peanuts goes up and you no longer have a savings margin. The third is security: your cell phone gets stolen and you lose touch with your future business partner. The fourth, investment risk: you start paying installments on the cart but can't finish and it's repossessed. And so on... The danger of instability is that the dream you have today, even if it's simple, has a high chance of getting gobbled up on its way to fulfillment. The consequence may be the loss of your investment or, perhaps worse, your willingness to try again.

Living and studying in Kenya two years ago I found this story of failure over and over again. Often people's investments were failing because they didn't have a financial buffer to push through unexpected setbacks. A family I lived with then has three such stories. First, the father lost his job at a bank as part of a World Bank structural adjustment “retrenchment” prescription (layoff employees to reduce the cost of public services) forcing the family to abandon half-completed work on an addition to their house. Second, the family built a pen and feeding area to produce income by raising cattle but it was left empty because they couldn't afford cows when school fees became a burden and higher priority. Finally, the father joined a community savings group but lost his investment when one of the members split town with all the money. By many respects this family was well off; they had no major health problems, the parents were alive, together, and both employed, some of their children had gone to higher education, they ate three meals a day, had a sturdy home, and kept a budget. A person living in a slum might have none of these things.

Again, the problem with instability is that it preempts the “American dream” romance of hard work leading to upward mobility that can be so tempting to prescribe to the world's poor. Plenty of poor people work hard but their ambitions and their capabilities are often not matched by necessary resources. So what's a solution? Micro-credit is having a fantastic impact on this problem by fast-tracking the route to enterprise creation and reducing the time spent on those rickety bridges. Worldbike works in a similar capacity and in collaboration with micro-credit to move people quickly and with low risk to the status of enterprise owners. Our additional caveat is that we work with bicycles and pursue businesses that are initially less proven and require more experimentation, more risk, and more debt than an individual might rightfully be willing to take on. In the end, we hope that our enterprises also pays higher dividends both for the individual and for society.

What we do is absorb the costs inherent in overcoming the technological and cultural hurdles of developing a new transportation sector. We and our funders act as the venture capitalists (that don't expect financial returns) and the technical consultants (that don't expect to be paid) that leave behind small, sustainable, profitable businesses that have no debt. When these businesses and technologies prove themselves, then the sector will be positioned to grow independently using micro-credit resources.

In Kibera we will work to undertake an entrepreneurship training curriculum that is integrated with the actual development of enterprises amongst members of the Soweto Youth Group. In tandem we will 1) collaboratively develop bicycle designs that will serve the group's future enterprises and 2) build bicycle design and maintenance capacity within the group and within the informal industrial sector where the bikes are likely to be manufactured.

Welcome to the b-Log: Kenya '08-'09

Welcome to the b-Log for Worldbike's current project in Nairobi and Naivasha, Kenya. My name is Andrew Hall. I am the project manager; Worldbike's current, sole, low-overhead, on-the-ground, Kenya representative and humbly your resident blogger for those who care to come along for the ride. I will tell you a little bit about the project, but first the...

b-Log: Remember the venerable b-side of 45 rpm records? The place where bands were permitted a little breathing room to try something new; something a little outside the family friendly, made for radio boundaries. My favorite b-side is by the Turtles. Frankly I don't remember what's on the a-side, some Utopian hit single like “Happy Together”, but on the b-side is “Buzzsaw” with a lot of eyebrow-raising distortion and shrill vocal enthusiasm with that single palpable lyric that gives the song its title. To me the b-side is where you get to know the band a little better. Whether it's rough, or tacky, or a great new departure it's usually where the band feels a little less like an untouchable icon and more tactile human.

As with a band, organizations like Worldbike can have that same unapproachable feel. The glossy brochure and the happy endings tell a story of infallible professional mystique. Often there is the facade of perfected development theory matched to deftly executed “interventions” that leave behind “compliant” “target populations” that are on the trajectory to health and prosperity. I call these narratives a-Logs and like a-sides they are polished products manufactured for public consumption. With our commitment to open-source design and participatory project implementation Worldbike also brings you the b-Log. This is the behind the scenes footage; our mistakes, our successes, our experimentation, our misconceptions... our shrill vocal enthusiasm. It's your backstage pass to meet Worldbike in the flesh. You are encouraged to critique, ask questions, help us problem solve, and be the inspiration to our work. Please, put your feet to the pedals because we want you to be part of this ride.