Revved and ready to go: Tanzania is set to tackle unstoppable boda boda taxis
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Version 0 of 1. May is not the best time to tour Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania. Getting around can be a nightmare because of heavy rains, knee-high flooding and intractable traffic jams. At 4pm one Monday the rain was pouring as a friend, Peter, tried to edge his Mazda into a road where the traffic was stationary. For 20 minutes, the car engine remained switched off. At this rate, it would take him until 9pm to drive the 20km to his home. Instead, he returned the car to the office car park, pulled on his raincoat, boarded a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) and arrived home within 90 minutes. That morning Peter and I had been listening to stories of how boda boda drivers had built their businesses in Dar es Salaam’s Temeke district. Yusuf Haidary started working as a part-time boda boda rider in 2010, while still studying for his O-levels. Leaving school in 2012, he was employed by a boda boda owner, whom he paid 8,000 Tanzanian shillings (about $3.50) a day to lease the bike. But he often saved double that amount for himself and within a year, he had bought his own motorcycle. “Today, I can make between TZS10,000 and 12,000 a day,” Haidary says. “But when it rains, I can make 20,000 or 25,000.” Jafari Mrisho, from Bagamoyo district near the coast, joined the boda boda business in 2011, after sitting his O-levels. He says his mother, a single parent, could not afford to keep him on at school and so he asked a friend to teach him how to ride a motorcycle. “Boda boda was the only business that was paying well – so I went straight into it,” Mrisho says. The following year he bought his own motorcycle and today he takes home between TZS20,000 ($8.80) and 30,000 daily. (Not bad for a country where, according to the World Bank, 28% of people live below the poverty line of $1.25 a day.) Across Tanzania, tens of thousands of young men are jumping on boda bodas each year – even as concern grows over their safety and security record. According to government figures, in 2003 Tanzania imported 1,884 private motorcycles. Last year, 185,110 private motorcycles were imported – most of them for boda boda operations. Haidary and Mrisho epitomise the appeal of the boda boda: young men out of school with no clear job opportunities who are able to enter a lucrative industry with only a few days’ training. Yusuf Ghor, chief executive officer of the Automobile Association of Tanzania (AAT), says the growth of boda bodas in Tanzania was inspired by their success in neighbouring Uganda, where bicycles were first used. If that is the case, it is not surprising that Tanzania’s boda bodas are as notorious as the Ugandan ones. According to Tanzania’s deputy traffic police commander, Johansen Kahatano, boda boda operators observe no regulations, including simple ones such as stopping at traffic lights. As in Uganda, many boda boda riders in Tanzania don’t have driving licences, do not wear helmets and have no qualms about driving in the wrong direction on one-way roads. And as in Uganda, the boda bodas are responsible for a significant percentage of road traffic injuries. In 2013, for instance, motorcycle riders comprised 22% of Tanzania’s road accident deaths and 25% of the injured. If you include their passengers, the figure rises significantly. One challenge to tackling safety is official attitude of derision or neglect towards boda bodas. Officials only speak out about the problem when the latest accident figures are released, or when a major crime is committed by men riding motorcycles. Yet if their growing numbers are anything to go by, boda bodas will only become more important as an employer of young people in Africa. Fred Muhumuza, one of Uganda’s leading development economists, says boda bodas might often be ignored in mainstream economic policy discourse, but they are important actors. “[Boda bodas] are an important source of employment for many youths and the skills required are very few. Almost anyone who can ride a bicycle can ride a boda boda motorcycle,” Muhumuza says. And while other professions may require years of training with no guarantee of a job for graduates, the low-level skills of boda boda riding are matched by a high demand for their vital service in countries with poor infrastructure. But, as Muhumuza points out, boda bodas are also a bona fide form of investment: a worker who buys a boda boda and finds a rider to operate it is no different from another who opens a small shop for extra income. “So, we should not be fighting to get rid of the [boda bodas],” says Muhumuza. “We should be trying to formalise and mainstream them.” Muhumuza points to Rwanda, which has a burgeoning reputation for making the state work, despite criticism of its democratic credentials. In the tiny east African country, Muhumuza says, boda boda riders generally have licences, and are more law-abiding than in neighbouring countries. In Tanzania, as deputy police commander Kahatano says, the task of cleaning up the boda boda industry has been mostly left to the country’s 4,000 police officers. Kahatano believes that owners of the motorcycles should be held more responsible for the conduct of the riders they employ, which perhaps suggests that there should be clear qualifications for people to set up a boda boda business, which could be enforced by a specific licensing government department. In 2013, a Tanzanian government official was quoted as saying that all boda boda operators should form associations. Such ideas need to be given force by tough government action. Instead of being seen merely as irritants of four-wheeled motorists, boda bodas should be ignored no longer. |