Boda boda: How Rwanda got it right
Boda bodas on Jinja Road in Kampala, Uganda. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- For the motorcycle sector in Rwanda, each boda boda rider (abamotari) and passenger helmet must be stamped with a unique identifying number, which has to be printed on the driver’s jacket and bike as well.
Motor cycles, commonly known as Boda Boda across East Africa have given authorities and citizens nightmare.
From riding against traffic, and on pavements, to jumping traffic lights and creating their own parking stages, the sector is now unmanageable. They have created their own rules, as the social order doesn’t apply to them.
They are now synonymous with crime, vigilantism and have become a law unto themselves. But how did it get here? Can it be salvaged.
Well, in Kigali, the story is different with President Paul Kagame’s administration just getting everything right in managing this sector. For them, nothing is chanced as Rwandans take their cleanliness and social order seriously and to heart.
For the motorcycle sector in Rwanda, each boda boda rider (abamotari) and passenger helmet must be stamped with a unique identifying number, which has to be printed on the driver’s jacket and bike as well. The motorcycles (locally referred to as moto moto) are also required by law to have GPS locator on it as well for easy traceability, in case any criminal act is committed.
The sector, governed through over 18 formed cooperatives, which work hand in hand with the traffic police to enforce discipline and law. The cooperative ensure that the riders religiously follow the traffic signs without the presence of a traffic officer.
Unlike in Nairobi, Kampala or even Dar es Salaam where the sector went rogue ages ago, in Kigali, the rule of helmets is strictly enforced with both the rider and passenger dutifully wearing helmets, with matching wear identification numbers, as mobile phone number engraved on them.
Passenger numbers
The cyclists are also barred by law from carrying more than one pillion, as opposed to Kenya and Uganda where the motorcycles carry as much as five passengers.
Another thing that stands out in Kigali is the requiem for female passengers to sit astride like men. They are also not allowed to take their babies on the motorbikes, for safety reasons.
Unlike in Nairobi and Kampala where boda bodas have taken every inch of space to create their parking stages and fiefdoms, in Kigali, the city has designated parking stages for riders where they wait for passengers.
Unlike the marauding gangs of cyclists in Nairobi and Kampala, things are done differently in Rwanda. Riders are banned from roaming the city scouting for passengers. Instead, it is the passengers who walk to the designated stages for their services.
In January, Kigali City administration upped the game. They mandated all fleet in the motorcycle transport services to migrate to the cashless payment system, requiring operators to install and use GPS-enabled fare technology that allows automated computation of travelled distance and fare settlement. Such feat is unimaginable in Kenya.
Cashless system
Kigali was banking on the cashless system to streamline urban mobility as it effectively ends fare haggling between riders and passengers, but it has also offered an opportunity to formalise the sector that attracts more than 30,000 operators in the capital Kigali and secondary cities.
In 2020, Business Daily columnist Carol Musyoka shared her glowing experience of the Rwandan Boda boda sector arguing that “Rwandans have never been here to play”
“I was accompanied on the trip by a colleague who was visiting the country for the first time. She marveled at the fact that there were paved pedestrian sidewalks everywhere but, more importantly, only human beings used the same as the boda bodas were mashed up in the sluggish evening traffic with us contrary to what we are used to here in the beloved +254. Our driver interjected at this point, saying that if a boda boda rider dared to drive on the sidewalk he would get heavily penalized,” she said.
GPS tracking
In Rwanda, each boda boda rider and passenger helmet was stamped with a unique identifying number, which had to be printed on the driver’s jacket and bike as well.
“The boda boda had a GPS locator on it as well for easy traceability, so that if the boda boda rider did something to a passenger and took off, one would only have to call the cooperative (they all have to be members of a cooperative) and just by keying in the time and location of the incident, the driver could be identified,” she said.
Unlike in Nairobi and Kampala where the riders make the disobedience of traffic rules the norm, in Rwanda the order is obeyed by everyone. When it comes to traffic lights, the motorcyclists stop, follow the traffic lights and move when they the lights turn green.
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