Bamboo Bike Project - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Bamboo Bike Project was started by two scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

The Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory is a research unit of Columbia University located on a campus in Palisades, N.Y., north of Manhattan on the Hudson River.- History :...

(LDEO), David Ho

David Ho (oceanographer)

David Ho is an American scientist who works at the University of Hawaii. He is known for his work on air-sea gas transfer and tracer oceanography. He also created the Bamboo Bike Project, with John Mutter.-Background:...

and John Mutter, with funding from The Earth Institute

The Earth Institute

The Earth Institute was established at Columbia University in 1995. The research institute's stated mission is to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with particular focus on sustainable development and the needs of the world's poor...

at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. The project's goal is to help local investors start factories that make low cost, high quality, locally produced bamboo bike widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

History

In 2006, David Ho, now a Professor of Oceanography at University of Hawaii at Manoa

University of Hawaii at Manoa

The University of Hawaii at Mānoa is a public, co-educational university and is the flagship campus of the greater University of Hawaii system...

, won $25,000 in a seed funding competition from the Earth Clinic to determine the feasibility of using bamboo bicycles to provide improved transportation in sub-Saharan Africa. In the summer of 2007, Ho and his colleague John Mutter, using seed funding from the Earth Clinic, paid for Craig Calfee to join them on a trip to Accra, Ghana to assess the feasibility of building bamboo bikes using locally sourced material. After a successful trip, the Bamboo Bike Project teamed up with the Millennium Cities Initiative

Millennium Cities Initiative

The Millennium Cities Initiative is a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Founded by Earth Institute director Professor Jeffrey Sachs in 2006, MCI aims to assist through research and policy analysis selected mid-sized cities across sub-Saharan Africa, located near Millennium...

in 2008 to help establish bamboo bike building factories in Kumasi, Ghana, and elsewhere. The project also added Marty Odlin, who was a product design and development engineer at K2 Sports

K2 Sports

K-2, Corporation. was founded in 1961 by brothers Bill and Don Kirschner on Vashon Island, near Seattle, Washington. K2 is known for pioneering fiberglass ski technology, which made skis significantly lighter and more lively than their wood and metal contemporaries...

. 2008 also saw the release of a KPMG

KPMG

KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands....

-authored report that examined the feasibility and investment opportunity of implementing a bamboo bicycle production facility in Kumasi, Ghana. This was followed a year later by a similar study for Kisumu

Kisumu

Kisumu is a port city in western Kenya at , with a population of 355,024 . It is the third largest city in Kenya, the principal city of western Kenya, the immediate former capital of Nyanza Province and the headquarters of Kisumu County. It has a municipal charter but no city charter...

, Kenya by graduate students at Columbia University

Columbia University

’s School of International and Public Affairs

School of International and Public Affairs

The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University is one of the most prestigious graduate schools of public policy in the world. Located on Columbia's Morningside Heights campus in the Borough of Manhattan, in New York City, the School has 15,000 graduates in more than 150...

(SIPA).

Goals

The listed goals of the Bamboo Bike Project are:

To build a better bike for poor Africans in rural areas.
To stimulate a bicycle building industry in Africa to satisfy local needs.
To setup systematic bamboo cargo bike building training.
To setup a supply chain of necessary parts and supplies.
To scale the effort so that it makes an impact.

Impact of bicycles

Experiments done in Africa (Uganda and Tanzania) and Sri Lanka on hundreds of households have shown that a bicycle can increase the income of a poor family by as much as 35%.

Benefits of Bamboo Frames vs Steel Frames In Africa

Bamboo is an excellent material for building bicycle frames. Bamboo frames are lighter and stronger than the poor quality steel bicycles, typically imported from China or India, currently available in Africa. The production of bamboo bicycles requires much less equipment, energy and capital than steel frames. Bamboo is grown throughout Africa and is a readily available cost effective material. The manufacturing of bamboo frames does not require a reliable electrical source making it possible to manufacture these frames at a large scale in impoverished areas lacking the infrastructure to support traditional manufacturing facilities. The use of local bamboo also provides employment in the production, transport and final use of this material. The use of this material promotes economic development and environmental sustainability while providing cost effective transport.

Ghana Production Facility

In January 2011 the Bamboo Bike Project (BBP) held a two week long training program designed to teach local workers in Kumasi Ghana how to build bamboo bicycles in the first large scale bamboo bike production facility in the world. This facility is controlled by Bamboo Bikes Limited (BBM), a Ghana based company owned by investor Kwame Sarpong. The training program was used to begin the production of 750 bamboo bicycles which were to be distributed to NGOs located throughout Ghana. The production of these bicycles was to provide the managing company BBM an opportunity to evaluate the facilities capacity for large scale production and provide adequate experience for the workers to begin large scale production. With the completion of the training program and the production of these first 750 bicycles this facility was to be the first facility capable of mass producing bamboo bicycles in the world. It is projected that this facility will be capable of producing up to 20, 000 bamboo bicycles a year. Manufacturing at this scale will provide employment, keep costs low, and make available cost effective transport to the local people.

External links

Bamboo Bike Project Official Website
Bamboo Bike Project Blog
Article in the Economist
Article at the Columbia Record
Video of one of the bamboo bikes being assembled