Speaking About The Economist…

On November 27, 2008, bamboo bicycles earned a mention in The Economist print edition.

In an article called “On your bike: A scheme to encourage cheap transport on two wheels,” the magazine introduced bamboo bicycles as a potential “key to mobilising rural Africans and unclogging the cities.” It mentioned the high tensile strength of bamboo, the low purchasing cost of a bamboo bicycle, and the KPMG–authored market study for creating a bamboo bike factory in Kumasi, Ghana.

We need to clarify and expand upon a few things mentioned in the article, and have posted a comment on the Economist’s site under “gorfrog.” The United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) estimates that bicycle use in Africa is very high. For instance, there are 14,000 bicycles currently being used in Kumasi, Ghana alone – and that number is rapidly growing. The main problem with bicycles in Africa is that the bicycles that many have access to are utterly inappropriate for the terrain, and for the uses to which they are put. The “glutinous dirt roads” and potholes mentioned by the author as a way to explain bicycles’ lack of popularity is precisely why many in rural and urban areas across Africa and across the developing world see a need for all-terrain, light and durable cargo carriers like the bamboo bike, capable of replacing “unsuitable” Chinese bikes in an economy where many can’t afford cars.  Such inappropriate bikes would indeed be discarded as soon as people have the chance to get a motor cycle or a car of any sort.

The Bamboo Bike Project has a unique mission that differs from the goals of individual entrepreneurs like American bike-maker Craig Calfee, mentioned in this article. His aim is to teach a few local entrepreneurs to build bamboo bicycles, and improve the livelihood of these entrepreneurs. However, this model will only produce tens of bikes a year, and will not be enough to satisfy the needs of larger populations in Africa. Just like in the US, boutique bike builders each produce ca. 100 bikes a year, whereas the large companies like Trek, Giant, Specialized, etc produce hundreds of thousands. It is these larger companies that are satisfying the needs of the majority of the people.

Our goal in the Bamboo Bike Project is to work with entrepreneurs and investors abroad who see economic, social, and technological potential in implementing large-scale bamboo bike production and sale in local markets. Ours is a project arising from the ground up, on the ground in areas like Kumasi, Ghana. Growth of the Bamboo Bike Project signifies the emergence of an industry more than the popularity of an imported invention.

Our sights are set much higher than a level of production limited to small workshops that produce only a few bikes a year. Success of the Bamboo Bike Project will mean the establishment and growth of a vast network of bamboo bicycle factories, which will each produce upwards of 20,000 bamboo bicycles annually for local distribution. The high levels of production and sale required by this model will more substantially improve the state of rural transportation, and will have a greater capacity to impact wider economic markets (potentially lowering the cost of other forms of effective transportation for rural residents even further). Larger factories will produce job opportunities that yield economic growth, and will be able to ensure quality control of our finished product.

We are excited by The Economist’s recognition of the bamboo bicycle and its potential, and are even more committed to our plans to transform that potential into a widely-experienced reality.

Greening Kumasi

The next Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) Investment Day will take place on December 9-10, 2008 in London. The purpose of the event is similar to Kumasi Investment Day New York, which is to bring to the attention of investors commercially viable foreign direct investment opportunities in Kumasi, along with the Millennium Cities of Blantyre (Malawi), Kisumu (Kenya), and Akure (Nigeria).

The Bamboo Bike Project is planning to send a bamboo bike to the event, and will try to attend if possible.  The project was mentioned in the Economist, in a story discussing MCI’s approach of attracting foreign investments to cities in poor countries:

One project in Kumasi is aimed at producing bamboo bicycles for the African market. Kumasi itself would be redesigned to become bike-friendly and the cycles would be made from bamboo grown on reclaimed land in Kumasi, further greening the city. 

The Columbia Criterium

Working late into the night on bamboo bikes after a long day of work at our day jobs, a little levity always helps to alleviate the fatigue and lift our spirits.

BBP put on The Columbia Criterium, in our own minds the best bike race in the world, but certainly the world’s first and only indoor bamboo bicycle race! The course–0.035 miles around the halls of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory‘s Geochemistry Building, where many great discoveries about the Earth has been made.  The course challenged riders with slick linoleum, flapping seismology posters, and four ninety-degree turns.

Results are below.

General Classification: M. Odlin
Sprints: J. Aguinaldo
King of the Mountains S. Murray

The Cyclist That Never Sleeps

In order to test different materials and manufacturing methods, the Bamboo Bike Project (BBP) team has been working late into the night.  On Wednesday, we finished the latest round of prototypes. The team wasted no time putting the bicycles to the test, taking them for a midnight ride through Manhattan, over potholes, road plates, and manhole covers.

Marty in Times Square with one of the prototype bikes.

The bicycles handled the Big Apple beautifully, and we’re confident that with a few modifications, it will do just as well on the unpaved roads of rural Ghana.

The team will get right to work on a bamboo lock.

Making Bikes, Breaking Bikes

Unlike steel, aluminum, or carbon bikes, bamboo bikes have not received extensive testing either in laboratory settings or in the professional peloton.  Therefore, it’s important that we test various building methods and materials to achieve the optimal balance between cost of manufacturing (including time and material) and safety.

Bamboo Bike Plans

With three bikes fully assembled and six more well on their way to being completed, we are beginning to assemble a fleet of bamboo bikes that we plan to test.  One of the bikes, built with untreated bamboo, has served as Marty’s commuter bike. In the ride to and from Marty’s office every day, it has been able to withstand many miles of wear on New York City potholes and steam grates, and constant breaking of stop-and-go traffic, and has withstood the rapid and significant changes in winter temperature. 

We are hoping to destroy five of the other bikes we’ve completed thus far, in the name of science.  Each of these prototypes is constructed with slight variations in design and in their component parts; by smashing each to pieces and breaking them in every way we can envision, we will test differences in material strength and rank the crash safety of different models.  In this way, we can ensure that our final bike prototypes are the strongest and safest they can possibly be.

And yet we maintain: our bikes have a future that goes far beyond their effective utilitarian use.  With the aim of keeping our attention focused on the aesthetics of a bamboo bicycle just as much as the strength of it, we are outfitting our final three prototypes with lights, traffic horns, and all the trappings of an eye-catching, exclusively-designed vehicle.

Marty's commuter bike taking shape

Fish needs bicycle

Joerg Simon from the Millennium Cities Initiative sent me this photo from the fish market in Kenya a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to share it.  After they loaded the fish onto the bike, they were unable to ride it.  These guys needed a bamboo cargo bike.

New Jersey Harvest

When our bamboo bike team heard rumors that fresh bamboo was growing wild along the sides of New Jersey roads, we set out to do some harvesting.  Unlike buying store-bought bamboo, harvesting fresh bamboo allows us to control the treatment method, which is essential to rigorous evaluation of our process.  New Jersey homeowners have planted a fair amount of bamboo in their backyards over the years and, as is the case with many weeds that grow of their own accord, this bamboo has grown beyond the boundaries of individual property lines.  This means that New Jersey has a substantial supply of fresh bamboo growing on public property. 

We needed to replenish our bamboo stock in order to support the construction of six more bamboo bikes – bringing the total number of bikes we will have produced to nine completed models.  One of these bikes is to be distance-tested to see how long it can last in prime physical condition; five will be used for destructive testing in order to test different bike constructions and ensure product safety; and three will be sent overseas to Ghana as sample bikes, for a Ghanaian investor with whom we are working in Kumasi.

Sean Murray and Nick Frey harvesting some bamboo in New Jersey. Don't worry, it'll grow back.

On our first trip down, we took the train, and met up with Nick Frey from Sol Cycles.  We talked multi-density fiberboard, crème brulee recipes, and saving the world.  More importantly, we spent a beautiful morning in the bamboo grove, searching for canes ready to blossom into bicycles. 

Harvested bamboo; ready for the train

On our second trip, we decided to rent a car so we can harvest all that we need. Driving around New Jersey, it was Sean who noticed the bamboo field growing thick in one of the backyards we drove past.  We stopped the car.  We approached the house.  We had struck gold (or at least some large quantities of good-quality bamboo).  The house – and its bamboo-laden backyard – was owned by a friendly New Jersey sculptor who taught design engineering at a local high school.  He had an appreciation for art and design and was intrigued by our project.  Besides, he told us that the New Jersey highway patrol had tried to kill the bamboo that had started encroaching upon the road, and couldn’t do it.  How wonderful it was to learn that his overgrown property was useful for something!

Useful indeed.  We were able to pick up enough bamboo to keep our bike construction on schedule.  We were getting ready to take our leave when this New Jersey homeowner offered us a tour of his large and winding backyard, which we accepted.  We listened to him explain that he had sold portions of his land to a Sri Lankan Buddhist group (they too must have gravitated toward the bamboo), and then we came upon it: a huge, imposing, towering statue…of the Buddha.  It was the largest Buddha statue in the Western hemisphere, he told us.  Built by the Sri Lankan Buddhist group.  Standing in front of this gigantic Buddha, in the middle of a bamboo field, by the side of a road in New Jersey, we thanked the kind teacher of design engineering for a completely surreal experience. We made our way back to the car, and then back to our lab, with armfuls of bamboo to make bikes.  The small world we live in!

OctoBBPerfest

The Kumasi Investment Day in NY that MCI organized has generated quite a bit of interest in bamboo bikes, including a potential investor in Ghana.   This has sparked a flurry of activity here at Bamboo Bike Project. Marty Odlin and his engineering team has been busy designing, building, and testing five prototype bicycles.  After they are satisfied, three bikes will be built and send off to Ghana for demonstration. The ultimate goal is to build a factory where ca. 20,000 bikes will be produced each year.

The short term goal.

The team looks forward to an autumn of hard work, late nights, and the sweet smell of fresh bamboo.

Kumasi Investment Day North America

Jim Geisel from KPMG, who helped us with a market study, with the bamboo cargo bike that we had built last year in Ghana.

 The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) held a Kumasi Investment Day in New York on Septmeber 29, 2008.  Among potential investment opportunities showcased was the production of bamboo bikes in Kumasi. 

The MCI press release follows:

New York, September 30, 2008 – The Mayor of Kumasi, Ghana, Mme. Patricia Appiagyei, declared her city “open for business” to a packed room of potential investors during  Kumasi Investment Day North America. The event took place at Columbia University on September 29, 2008, and was organized by The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) in collaboration with the Kumasi Development Foundation (KDF), Asanteman Council of North America (ACONA), Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Corporte Council on Africa (CCA) and Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC). It was co-sponsored by the law firm Alston & Bird.

Several high-level government and business representatives from Ghana were among the participants. The keynote address at the event was given by Professor Jeffery D. Sachs. “Ghana has every reason to succeed in attracting investment,” stated Professor Sachs during his address. “It has great leadership under President John Kufuor, a stable democracy, very fertile land where everything will grow, a great cultural heritage, and recent improvements in infrastructure. I am confident investment in Ghana will take-off,” said Sachs.  Millennium Promise Executive Director John McArthur also spoke about opportunities in Ghana.  

Investors learned about a number of commercially viable investment opportunities identified by the MCI and its partners. The opportunities included cocoa and cocoa processing, mining, tourism, construction, light manufacturing and pharmaceuticals. KPMG Netherlands presented some specific investment opportunities, including a 4 or 5 star hotel with 160 rooms, a 3,000 m² shopping mall, a fruit juice processing plant with an annual capacity of 3 million liters, and a pharmaceutical plant with an annual production capacity of 2 billion tablets and capsules. Other interesting investment projects presented included a student housing at Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi and a palm oil processing plant.  KPMG analyzed the commercial viability of producing bamboo bicycles in a report is found here. The report is No. 04/2008 in the MCC and VCC Working Papers Series on Investment in the Millennium Cities.

Please see here for a final event program. For Alston & Bird’s press release on the event, please see here.

Bamboo Bicycles in Kumasi, Ghana

We have always believed that in order for bamboo cargo bikes to make a differences in the lives of people in Africa, scaling (i.e., mass production) would be key.  We have been investigating how we could help people in Africa produce enough bikes to satisfy local demand.  The first step in such an inquiry is a market study, and we have gotten a lot of help from our friends at Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and KPMG.  This is from an MCI press release:

The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) at The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC) – a joint center of Columbia Law School and The Earth Institute – are pleased to announce the release of the third working papers in the MCI and VCC Working Papers Series on Investment in the Millennium Cities.

The paper, entitled “Bamboo Bicycles in Kumasi, Ghana” (Working Paper No. 04/2008), assesses the feasibility and investment opportunity of implementing a bamboo bicycle production facility in Kumasi, Ghana. It was produced in partnership with KPMG.

The MCC and VCC Working Papers Series on Investment is intended to provide policy analysis and outline challenges and opportunities for investment across the Millennium Cities. For more information, please contact Editor-in Chief Dr. Karl P. Sauvant at karl.sauvant@law.columbia.edu, Editor Joerg Simon at jks2149@columbia.edu, or Managing Editor Paulo Cunha at +646-884-7422, pmc2105@columbia.edu.