Last week I had reason to drive down Bombo road, onto Kampala road before turning off onto Entebbe Road.
I cannot remember the last time I did this. I do not think I
will be doing it ever again.
Driving on our capital main thoroughfare, is a nightmare of hundreds (and I fear I understate this) of
boda bodas criss crossing, weaving, ducking and generally causing hypertension
on that dual lane carriageway.
Add to that the trucks loading or offloading this or that
merchandise, taxis starting and stopping without warning, pedestrians
jaywalking all over the place and you really have to wonder. The horror.
Those were my initial thoughts, but when I sat down and
tried to make sense of it calmly, I could not help but marvel at how the market
works.
First off the boda bodas are responding to a need, a need
for transportation, in a city without mass transportation services. They are
responding to a need for quick and inexpensive movement in a city clogged with
cars...
The urgent need for their regulation is understandable, not
least because they have become a power onto themselves, see Wandegeya and Jinja
road intersections. But we have to be careful not to throw out the baby with
the bathwater.
When I looked in my archives I found a pre-covid article
about a Safe Boda end of year party. Hundreds of riders had congregated at
Lugogo Cricket oval for day long reveling with family and friends. I remember being
in awe at how the company had aggregated all these numbers under one roof – it was
rumoured at the time there were about 10,000 SafeBoda Riders, and in doing so
providing employment, safer transport and financial inclusion.
But only last week I read another article about Mogo, which
has carved out a niche for itself in financing the purchase of motorbikes for boda
riders. According to the story, in the last two years they have financed 30,000
bike purchases but since their inception towards the tail end of the Covid,
they have helped finance the purchase of half a million bikes around the country.
For those of us looking from the outside, this number seems
like a stretch, but not so much so when you factor in the hundreds, maybe
thousands of boda bodas Uganda police has impounded, with little effect on the
overall industry.
I remember before Covid thinking, the boda boda industry was
a bubble waiting to burst, going by the number of riders I saw not having a
fare. I guestimated that at least a third of bodas had a rider only, no
passenger. My thinking at the time was that the industry was gearing up for a major
correction, as more and more people bought bodas but the market was getting
saturated and would prove less viable for entrepreneurs.
I suspect it is not as lucrative as it may have been 20
years ago for the first movers. But like Malthus, the 18th century
economist who warned that the world was doomed as population grew to stretch known
resources, I did not factor in innovation, ingenuity and sheer grit of the
industry operators.
With Covid came the explosion of the delivery business, which
bodas have cornered for themselves. Everyone has his go to boda guy. Especially
women. You cannot be a woman worth the varnish on your nails, if you do not
have at least have three bodas on speed dial.
One Sunday afternoon I was out to one of our leading
restaurants and could not help but notice the number of boda guys waiting to take
delivery of orders. On asking the duty manager how much of their business is in
deliveries, without blinking an eye, he said 60 percent. And this, when seating
space in his restaurant was already at a premium.
So I was wrong those many years ago, that the boda bubble
was about to burst. Thankfully so.
That being said, government has to recognize that what was
originally a stop gap measure, a plaster, for an inadequate transport system,
is growing in to a monster that needs to be regulated.
These boda guys are not stupid. They are aware of the
potential threats to their livelihoods that could come with a more organized system.
They will organize, if they already haven’t done so and resist any attempts to regularize
the system.
We should not forget how one UTODA used to run riot all over
the city, their taxis a power to themselves and their business model not unlike
a criminal organization.
As is usual, the market is often ahead of the regulators.
And thank God for that. Government needs to recognize the importance of the
bpda industry, but take a long term view about how to integrate mass transport,
taxis and the bodas into a coherent transport industry. The industry or market
can very well do this by themselves, but the problem with the market is that it
tends to concentrate resources or power in a few hands, and leave the rest
exploited and trampled upon.
