The Situation

Currently, no form of appropriate public transport exists in rural Africa. The resulting need for mobility is immediate and vast.

Public transit in Africa is typically run-down or nonexistent, and the costs of owning a private vehicle to most of the population are prohibitive. That leaves few options for mobility, especially for those in more remote areas who have the highest need for transport.

Most rural communities rely on motorbikes as their only source of motorized short-haul point-to-point transport (often walking huge distances instead) and minivans as their only source of long-haul travel to nearby towns. Unfortunately, both of these transport modes are seriously deficient in a number of areas. Auto rickshaws - common in urban areas - are inadequate for rural terrain and do not even operate in these areas.

Our team conducted a survey of over 1,500 people in rural and urban areas throughout Kenya to understand the need.

The Effect

Africa’s rural poor are some of the most disadvantaged and underserved people on earth. Their demand for mobility is the highest, yet a total lack of appropriate public transport seriously inhibits socio-economic development, creating an extreme bottleneck for future growth and prosperity. A lack of appropriate transport in rural areas creates acute problems:

  • children struggle to access education, often walking many kilometers to get to school
  • women spend most of the day gathering water and carrying heavy loads on their heads
  • farmers struggle to transport goods to market or access improved farm inputs
  • entrepreneurs have limited opportunity to reach customers, weakening local economies
  • communities have little access to information services such as newspapers and mail
  • the sick struggle to access hospitals, doctors or preventative medicine

Without appropriate transport, women and children in rural areas often walk many miles to transport heavy loads by foot.

The Opportunity

The majority of rural communities throughout Africa represent the poor and the extreme poor. These end-users are extremely price sensitive, thus transportation demand in rural areas is highly price elastic. A more affordable market-based transport service would serve many more people and begin to satiate this demand. Furthermore, practical and safe transportation would increase productivity and assure safety.

Experts and leaders also recognize the importance of strong transport links—recently Zambia’s President Rupiah Banda highlighted that “the high cost of transport in Africa has negatively impacted Africa’s competitive capacity on the global economic market”.

The need is immediate and vast, but a solution is possible. Effective means of public transportation would solve immobility and enable socio-development to thrive as people become mobile and rural economies become connected to a wealth of regional opportunity.