Pedaling Progress in Ghana

Pedaling Progress in Ghana: Update from our partners

VILLAGE BICYCLE PROJECT    |    Field report – June 2024

At Re-Cycle (Bikes to Africa), our mission is to improve access to bicycles, thereby enhancing mobility and quality of life in rural communities across Africa. Recently, we received an update directly from our partners in Ghana, the Village Bicycle Project team, detailing their latest initiative to distribute bicycles in the Upper West Region. This case study highlights the impact of this project, showcasing how the provision of bicycles has started to transform the lives of farmers, school children, and artisans in the communities of Kukpli and Guomaal.

The village bicycle project team distributed 60 bicycles to two communities both in the Upper West Region of Ghana as part of the project objectives to ensure access to bicycles and to enhance mobility for the people in rural communities in Ghana. These communities are Kukpli and Guomaal, both communities are located within Wa West district in the Upper West region.

It was noted that these farming communities are in the harvesting season and are having challenges transporting their farm produce to the house or market. Most of their foodstuffs get rotten and they do not get value for their labour.

Trainers also noted that some school children in these communities were also found to walk as far as 20km to school every day. They get to school late and sometimes miss lessons. It was noted the school dropout rate is high in these communities due to long walking distance.

Thanks to Village bicycle project and partners at Re-Cycle who came to the aid of the inhabitants by offering 60 bicycles to school children and farmers in the area.

20 school children, 30 farmer and 10 artisans benefited from the school project and farmers initiative.

The chief of the Kukpli community expressed his appreciation to the team and recounted the some impacts the bicycles are going to have in the lives of the people in the area.

‘For the community members, it’s not just bicycles but tools to unlock great opportunities for the people in the area. We can now get to our farms in no time without fatigue and cart farm produce to the market with ease and the produce will not get rotten, we are happy that we are going to enjoy the fruit of our labour. Children will have the pleasure of going to school and grow up to become good citizens, dropout rate will reduce. We envision having responsible people and sustainable communities in the near future. Thanks to Village Bicycle Project and partners for helping to address our mobility challenges’, Stated by the Kukpli community Chief.

It was noted that about 90% of the people in these communities are farmers. They cultivate crops such as millet, yam tomatoes, beans, groundnuts, green pepper, and soya beans among others. They also rear fowls and animals including cattle, sheep and goats.

Most of the farms are located far away from the community and the farmers’ only means of transport is by walking using narrow footpaths. Due to the deplorable nature of the roads, cars rarely ply the roads, farmers resort to walking the full distance of almost 30km to Wa the biggest market town to sell their farm produce and purchase other inputs and food ingredients. Also, most farmers travel far distances with their family on foot to access health care and attend other social events such as funerals and performance of traditional marriages.

We responded to the communities’ application to provide them a total number of 60 bikes due the increasing demand and the need for bicycles by the people of the area to attend school, clinics and to visit farms.

We reached out to 20 school children, 30 farmers and 10 artisans.

One local repairer honored our invitation to participate in our One Day repair & maintenance training. He appeared very helpful and was anxious to learn new things from our trainers.

According to the trainers, it was a good program and would recommend the communities to receive additional bikes should they ask for it.