Kampala’s moto-taxis have joined the ride-hailing movement with a promise to address one of its biggest transportation problems.
If I needed to be convinced of the utility of SafeBoda, a ride-hailing app for motorcycle taxis in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, the accident scene I witnessed on my first ride with the service more than did the trick. On a Monday afternoon in March, as I sat on the back of a 110-cc, Indian-manufactured “boda boda,” as moto-taxis here are known, my driver, Abdallah Mawejje, braked as traffic slowed along one of the city’s many exhaust-filled thoroughfares. In the midst of a scrum of pedestrians and idling vehicles, a young man lay motionless on the pavement, bleeding from his head as a passerby tried to drag him to the sidewalk.
“He’s a boda driver,” Mawejje confirmed as we maneuvered past, with a tone of indifference that suggested he’d seen this many times before. “That’s why you should avoid these guys. They speed. They overtake vehicles when they shouldn’t. They don’t take care.”
Mawejje, of course, is a boda driver himself — one of an estimated 80,000 in this hilly, congested city of 1.5 million people. Yet since he joined the SafeBoda fleet — donning its trademark orange vests and helmets — almost a year ago, he’s undergone a transformation. In addition to taking clients from an Uber-style app, which allows customers to request a pickup, pay for their ride — at a cost similar to that of normal boda drivers — and rate their driver on a smartphone, he follows a strict code of conduct, which entails obeying traffic regulations and keeping his bike properly maintained. He’s a Red Cross-certified first responder, has undergone road safety training as part of a partnership with the Ugandan Police, and carries a high-quality helmet for his passengers.
While this may all seem like it should be standard practice, in Kampala safety is typically an afterthought. Boda bodas are popular here due to their low cost and ability to cut through gridlocked traffic, yet only 30 percent of drivers wear helmets and almost none make them available to their clients.
