In Uganda's chaotic capital, boda-boda motorcycle taxis are a source of life and death
For tens of thousands of men in Uganda’s capital, driving a motorcycle taxi is a way to make a living
KAMPALA, Uganda — The young men perched on motorcycles looked dazed in the morning heat. But at the sight of a potential passenger, they furiously kick-started their machines and tried to outrace each other for the business.
For tens of thousands of men in Uganda's capital, Kampala, this is how to make a living. For others, the speeding motorcycles embody the city's chaos as an essential but menacing means of transport.
The motorcycle taxis, known locally as boda-bodas, are ubiquitous in East African capitals like Nairobi and Kigali. But nowhere in the region have boda-boda numbers been surging more dramatically than in Kampala, a city of 3 million people, no mass transit system and rampant unemployment.
An estimated 350,000 boda-bodas operate in Kampala, driven by men who come from all parts of Uganda and say there are no other jobs for them.
“We just do this one because we have nothing to do,” said one driver, Zubairi Idi Nyakuni. “All of us here, other people even, they have their degrees, they have their master’s (degrees), but they are just here. They have nothing to do.”
The boda-boda men, who operate mostly unregulated, have resisted recent attempts to dislodge them from the narrow streets of Kampala’s central business district, frustrating city authorities and underscoring the government’s fears over the consequences of angering a horde of jobless men.
“We must appreciate where the boda-boda comes from, how this whole phenomenon grew,” said Charles M. Mpagi, spokesman for Tugende, a Kampala-based company that specializes in financing boda-boda purchases. “You have quite a large number of people that are young,
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