When you can't afford a bike, what do you do? Rwandan ingenuity says, make one out of wood, some scraps of rubber and maybe some duct tape. Although these home spun transportation tools help tremendously in hauling heavy loads, they are a bit unwieldy.

Enter the Coffee Bike Project

Humanitarian efforts have helped Rwandan farmers with the construction of centralized washing stations and cupping facilities which have enabled them to produce coffees that have earned a remarkable reputation for quality in a short amount of time. However, one of the last great challenges facing the farmers is transporting the cherries from their farms to the central washing stations before fermentation degrades the crop.

To help solve Rwanda's transportation problem, the Coffee Bike Project aims to make specially designed load-bearing bikes available to farmers for a reasonable price on credit and where quality premiums would cover the bike’s cost. Jay Ritchey, Project Manager of the Coffee Bike Progam, describes his initial meeting with the farmers and his introduction of the program.

“It is natural for them to be skeptical of this foreign program, some white guy coming in and trying have them buy this bicycle. They don’t know how much the bicycle is really worth, they don’t know if I am trying to rip them off, for all they know I just look like another business man trying to make a as much profit as I am able off them, like so many have done before. But in this meeting I answered with clarity and passion the question and complaint of the amount of the bicycle, “Why does it have to be so expensive?” I told them that the bicycle costs $200USD to make in the factory, and costs $50 to ship here, we are not making any money. This bicycle would cost four to five times as much in Europe or the U.S. and we could make a profit, but we are not selling it there, we are selling it here and not making it a profit. Because our motive is not to make money, it is to address the issues of Rwandan coffee farmers that bar them from prospering, mainly internal transportation issues. And we are trying to make the bicycle accessible through a three-year loan. There are plenty of people in this country that could buy the bicycle upfront, but we are not selling it to them, we are selling it to you because we want to partner with you in improving your livelihoods. The buyers of your coffee in the U.S., Canada and Europe are putting money into this program because they think it will both improve your economic situation and the product that they buy and sell in their countries. The group lightened up, and a few of them stood up, and with sincerity in their voice they said they the now understand the program, and why the program was there. It was a moment of satisfaction for me, because I felt like a bond of trust and understanding was being established for the program.”

The "Coffee Bike" was engineered specifically for transporting heavy loads of coffee. The bicycle is the perfect tool for this transport because of its lower maintenance technology and it allows growers to manage their own transport infrastructure without overly large investments. The expense to own, maintain and fuel a truck is not an economically viable option. Besides breaking down often, trucks have difficulty dealing with the dirt roads, especially when muddy. Because the quality of the crop is directly related to the time it takes to transport the cherry to the mill, it is a great advantage for the farmers to own their own transportation.