On the outskirts of Lusaka, 5.30 am. In the brief dawn, wiry men on mercilessly overloaded bicycles tremble their way into the centre of the Zambian capital. The frames of the battered, black men's bikes lurch, barely controllable. Large sacks of charcoal are lashed vertically and horizontally to the pannier racks, weighing a good 75 kilos in total. The charcoal from the wooded surrounding countryside provides many households with energy for cooking. Roughly welded reinforcements are intended to prevent the frame and pannier rack from collapsing. That doesn't always work. And you brake with your foot.
It was pictures like these that two American students took home with them from their university project abroad in Zambia in 2004. Pictures of hard-working, friendly people. Images that were nurtured in them. And eventually matured into an idea: with better bikes and the right training, Vaughn
Spethman and Dustin McBride, it should be easy to improve the lives of these and other people in this poor country. In 2007, they had finished their studies in the USA and returned to Zambia. As company founders. The two green-fingered young entrepreneurs collected donations as start-up capital,
teamed up with two local businessmen and launched the Zambikes brand in the harsh light of the hot country.
Their main product: a heavy but robust six-speed steel bike with a sturdy luggage rack. The cold yellow frame is labelled "Amaka Sana". In the language of the Bemba people, this means "very strong".
Mwewa Chikamba is one of the two African partners. In his mid-thirties, with a neat shirt and the
and the strong physique that only the middle class can afford here. He is the brand's logistician and commercial strategist and makes it clear that he thinks little of charity projects financed by donations: "It makes no sense to depend on donations. The people in production and the customers have to take responsibility for what they do. We have also never distributed the bikes as charity, because people
don't value them and don't care enough."
At 150 euros, an "Amaka Sana" costs around twice as much as the cheap Chinese import bikes. That's not much, but given that the average annual income is less than 400 euros, it's a lot. This is why Zambikes subsidises its popular bike: the brand also builds cargo trailers and those for transporting the sick. In
Zambia, a country with few cars and practically no porter animals, they are so helpful that international aid organisations are happy to order them. The profits from the trailer business support the price of the people's bike and a new cargo bike called "Njovu" (elephant), which can carry 150 kilos of pannier load, and they allow the training of mechanics and support staff.
the training of mechanics and authorised dealers throughout the country. "We do business," says Mwewa Chikamba, "but we do social business." Profits flow back into the company or are donated.
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