BURUNDI-TRANSPORT: Bikes Beat Fuel Shortage

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

BUJUMBURA, Oct 27 1996 (IPS) - A fuel shortage resulting from a three-month old embargo has put many people in Burundi on their bikes – a mode of transport previously spurned by in capital.

The bicycle, mostly used by peasants in the hilly countryside, has risen in popularity in Bujumbura since Burundi’s neighbours imposed the sanctions on Jul. 31 to punish the regime that seized power six days earlier.

“More and more people here are now resorting to bicycles to beat the blockade,” says Jean-Claude Kavumbagu, a local journalist who himself ferries passengers on his five-saddle machine that takes up to 14 people.

The five-seat, 680-kg tandems were introduced here in September, two months after Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Cameroon, Zambia and Ethiopia imposed sanctions against Burundi to force military strongman Major Pierre Buyoya to return the strife- torn Central African country to civilian rule.

Kavumbagu picks up and deposes passengers along the roads in this humid lakeside capital. “We haven’t started charging fares yet because we are still introducing the bicycle to the public,” Kavumbagu told IPS.

A leading Burundian architect, Bankeyakandi Ambroise, said he was building ten tandems at a total cost of 2.5 million Burundi francs (nearly 8,000 dollars), to reduce the transport problems in Bujumbura, where the little fuel available has been rationed since the embargo.

“People are suffering,” Bankeyakandi told IPS. “There are few buses on the road and taxis are very expensive for the majority of the people here.”

Prime Ndikumagenge, a journalist with the local ‘Radio Burundi’, says taxis now charge double for a five-kilometre ride, a distance for which passengers used to pay 500 Burundi francs (1.58 dollars) before the July 31 embargo.

Paying 1,000 Burundi francs for a taxi is much more than most people can afford in a war-ravaged country where the official monthly minimum wage is 10,000 francs (31.74 dollars) and the rent on a one-bedroom house is around 3,000 francs (9.52 dollars) per month.

For now, Ambroise, a self-employed architecture has just one tandem. He says the ministry of commerce and industry in Bujumbura has formed a committee to look into the issue of copyright to protect the cycles he is planning to build.

He discounts the idea that his proposed fleet will become redundant once the embargo is lifted. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think we can use the bicycle in the agriculture sector. We can use it for carrying bananas, potatoes, cassava and vegetable from the fields to the urban markets.”

The prices of basic foodstuff such as bananas, manioc flour, potatoes and vegetables have risen by up to 50 percent in the past three months because the fuel crisis has interrupted the supply of farm produce to Bujumbura and other towns.

Ambroise believes this would not have happened if farmers were able to use cycles to transport their products. “The bicycle is energy efficient and a cheaper means of transport,” he explains.

His view is supported by Kavumbagu. “Even if the embargo is lifted, there are still people out there who don’t have enough money to ride on a bus. They will continue to ride the tandem,” he argues.

But since the air routes as well as the overland ones via Tanzania and Zaire through which imports reach landlocked Burundi are blocked by the embargo, Kavumbagu fears that, if the sanctions continue, cycle dealers will run out of parts.

“We shall not be able to get tyres,” he said. “And we shall not know what to do with our cycles.”

As Kavumbagu’s tandem negotiated Bujumbura’s roads, many pedestrians smiled at the passengers, who included this IPS correspondent. When the cycle passed the harbour on Lake Tanganyika, a small crowd chanted “Nyerere”, “Nyerere”.

Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere is the internationally-backed mediator on Burundi.

“People call the bicycle Nyerere because it is perceived here that it was Nyerere who imposed the embargo against Burundi,” Kavumbagu explained.