Bamboo bicycle business shoots up in a struggling African country

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Bamboo bicycle business shoots up in a struggling African country

Based in Zambia, Zambikes employs and empowers Africans to manufacture bicycles locally, including some made from bamboo.

NEGROTTO VIVIANE/SIPA/Newscom/File

Zambikes manufactures, assembles, and distributes high-quality bicycles 鈥� including bikes whose frames are made from local bamboo plants 鈥� in the southern African country of Zambia. The bicycles are distributed to medical workers, pastors, or teachers allowing them to travel three times as fast as on foot.

Oct. 17, 2011, 10:00 a.m. ET

has been helping Africans get around on locally made bikes since 2007.

Now they want to get the rest of the world rolling, too, but with a twist: These new cycles are almost 100 percent bamboo.

Zambia, where Zambikes is based, ranks a staggeringly low 150 out of 169 on the UNDP鈥檚 . Vaughn Spethmann and Dustin McBride witnessed the country鈥檚 dire economic straits and high unemployment rate first-hand during a 2004 university trip and founded upon their return to the United States, according to .

Believing business to be the best way to remedy the country鈥檚 woes, they wanted their new company to 鈥�,鈥� Mr. Spethmann told Social Capital Markets Europe.

Spethmann says that as of May 2011, "Zambikes has distributed more than 8,000 bicycles, 900 bicycle ambulances and cargo carts, supplied much-needed spare parts, sold upwards of 200 bamboo bicycle frames worldwide, and have employed more than 100 Zambians."

Zambians who use the can increase daily earning from $2 a day to $20, he said.

Zambikes wants to expand overseas, and it plans to do so sustainably. In addition to the metal bikes they produce in Africa, they now export bamboo bicycles to the United States.

Bamboo is exceedingly easy to grow and can shoot up under the right conditions, according to PlanetGreen.com. It鈥檚 flexible and light, and the bikes made from it can be put together using , according to the BBC.

Some might question the structural integrity of a bamboo bicycle, but the bikes鈥� proponents say they鈥檙e just as sturdy as the traditional metal frames. The Guardian鈥檚 GreenLiving Blog took one of bamboo models out for a spin in 2009 and found that it was comfortable, with great shock absorption. If you need to see it to believe it, check out of three large men piling onto a bamboo bike made in Ghana.

Zambikes isn鈥檛 the only company getting in on the action, though. are also trying to help Africans ride to economic prosperity. Now those in the market for a shiny new cycle can get a killer set of wheels and help support African entrepreneurs, too.

鈥� first appeared on , a blog published by .

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