'Own your own boda' (motorcycle taxi) empowers Ugandans

A startup helps motorcycle taxi drivers in Kampala, Uganda, buy their bikes, which in turn helps them buy homes, start businesses, and send their kids to school.

By Rachel Cernansky,?Contributor / August 1, 2012

Motorcycle taxis, or boda bodas, are Kampala, Uganda's equivalent of rickshaws in India or yellow cabs in New York.

Courtesy of Edward Echwalu

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To get around Kampala, the capital of Uganda, you might find yourself on the back of a motorcycle.

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Motorcycle taxis, or boda bodas, are that East African city's equivalent of rickshaws in India or yellow cabs in New York. But boda boda drivers, however sharply they're dressed,? often barely make ends meet: A big chunk of most drivers' incomes goes toward rent payments to the motorcycle owner.

For a growing number of boda boda drivers, however, that loss of income has stopped: Instead of paying 50,000?shillings ($20) a week in rent for the motorcycle, they pay 60,000 shillings ($24) a week for 17 or 18 months to become full-fledged owners of their own bikes.

Own Your Own Boda (OYOB) is a young enterprise that aims to profit by empowering people to earn more income and be less dependent on an owner who can take the bike away at any time. OYOB reinvests its profits into buy more motorcycles and expanding the program to other drivers ? and perhaps eventually to other cities.

To date, OYOB has loaned out about 70 motorcycles, most of which are on the road now (25 loans are already completed). Another 20 to 30 people are on the waiting list.

Co-founder and CEO Michael Wilkerson says that once the driver owns his own motorcycle, he takes home about $100 extra per month. Drivers have used that extra income to buy homes, start new businesses, and pay school fees for their children.

OYOB was founded by Mr. Wilkerson and a friend he met while working at The Independent news magazine in Uganda, Matt Brown. The enterprise came into being almost by accident. Medie Sebi, who is now the company's manager, was a boda boda driver in Kampala whom Wilkerson trusted and had befriended. Mr. Sebi managed to get a boda boda loan, and when he took ownership of the motorbike, he was able to sell it and buy land for his mother.

"Medie took me to have lunch with his mother, in her village on the land that he bought, in the small one-room brick house, which he also helped build," Wilkerson says.

He was impressed. So Wilkerson and Mr. Brown asked Sebi if he'd want another loan; they wanted to try out administering such a loan, and they trusted Sebi as a starting point. He said yes ? and pointed out that many others like him needed the same kind of help.

Soon enough, Wilkerson and Brown had loaned out seven bikes. Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda, who founded The Independent, took notice. "I'll never forget the words he used," Wilkerson says. "'You are changing the trajectory of these people's lives.'"

Mr. Mwenda is not one to support just any old development program. Interested in seeing the positive impact scaled up, he invested the project. It's been growing ever since.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/56HjaohGKdQ/Own-your-own-boda-motorcycle-taxi-empowers-Ugandans

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