Pedal power: Zambia’s female farmers go further by bike – in pictures

Anick Lubinda rarely stands still. In her day job she is a dairy farmer but she also chairs Kaziwa, a women’s cooperative in Zambia with 9,460 members. A new bicycle scheme the group has been trialling for the past year has changed her trips to market. ‘Women are the change-makers. They are the ones who manage their families,’ says Lubinda, a mother of five. ‘They are responsible for everything in the household – taking children to school, drawing water, growing vegetables. We women must work hard, to change things, to help provide for the family. To stand on our own’

Lubinda at home in Mukwalantila village, near Zimba, with her bike

Lubinda (right) and Hilda Ndoka (left) with their cattle. Lubinda used to take her milk on foot to the nearest depot, 7km away in Zimba and it would take her an hour and 35 mins. By the time she got there the milk had often spoiled in the heat. ‘I was having to sell the soured milk at a really low price and I couldn’t manage to pay school fees for my children,’ she says. Going by bike has cut her journey to 40 minutes and the milk stays fresh, doubling her income so she can buy food and school equipment

Elizabeth Kankoyo (right) says the bike scheme made her mind up about going into dairy farming, with the chance to earn around 1,000 Kwacha (GBP43) more than the average local salary. ‘I was thinking about going into dairy farming, because I thought I could make money. But once I had the bike, I knew I would be able to do it’

Lubinda at home with her daughter, Judith (left), and niece, Betha. The bike is part of a scheme that includes a smartphone, a torch to ride safely at night and a solar lamp that Judith can use to do homework in the evenings

Ndoka (right) and Kankoyo (left) pour the milk they have collected into an urn, ready to transport to the depot in Zimba. Going by bike means they can now carry up to 40 litres of milk each

Kankoyo transports a 20-litre urn of milk by bike to the depot, 7km away in Zimba

Only 17% of Zambia’s rural population live within 2km of a good road, according to the World Bank. And that means the vast majority of farmers don’t have easy (or affordable) access to motorised transport

Let to right: dairy farmers Hilda Ndoka, Elizabeth Kankoyo and Enia Simukombwe stand with their bikes in Mukwalantila village. So far the bicycle scheme is reaching 140 dairy farmers

‘I’m very proud of my bicycle,’ Lubinda says. ‘The whole community – and the other Kaziwa women – they admire these bikes. We want everyone to have the chance to own one, to be able to change their way of living for the better’

Mutinta Shakainda uses an online logging system to keep track of sales at the milk depot in Zimba. Dairy farmers can also check their sales remotely via SMS texts. The smartphones that come with the bike scheme enable dairy farmers to keep in touch with the community and to warn each other of diseases and any other problems

(Left to right) Belinda Syulikwa, Violet Dabali, Beatrice Siankwende and Judith Siankalou stand with their bikes in Luyaba, Zambia. The four farmers are members of the Kaziwa Women’s Group and also chair their own local groups. They all say the bikes have made a difference in their communities. For Judith (far right), the bike came to her rescue last year when severe drought meant she had to travel 65km by bike to buy food. ‘The bicycles came at just the right time. Without them we would have died’

Family members also borrow the bikes to get around. Chimunya Siambula (right) uses the bike belonging to her grandmother, Violet Dabali (left), to get to school in Luyaba. The school is 7km away and it used to take her 90 minutes on foot, but now she is there in 30 minutes by bike. Siambula, 21, left school for a while after having a baby, but she has returned and wants to be a police officer. ‘I want her [the baby] to be educated. Maybe one day she will be a policewoman too’

Girls go to school in Lubaya on bikes borrowed from the scheme for female farmers

Women farmers gather in Luyaba, south of Kalomo. Beatrice Siankwende (centre), a local farmer, says having a bike has saved her a lot of money on transport. Previously, she would have paid 50 Kwacha (GBP2) each way to reach the main market town by truck. In rural areas the average household monthly income is around 810 Kwacha (GBP35)

A woman opens up an
ntembe mobile money kiosk in Kalomo. Mobile money – which works by transferring credit via text message – is well established across Zambia, allowing rural communities to do business and make payments from remote locations. The growing use of mobile technologies like this paved the way for the scheme for local female farmers. The women use their smartphones to pay off the bikes in small instalments

Mutinta Kanene manages the bike shop in Kalomo, Zambia. Buffalo Bikes, which supplies the bicycles for the dairy farmers, employs about 135 women in its distribution and repair hubs. Kanene, 26, started at the bike shop as an intern. Working in these bike hubs is helping to boost the standing of women in their communities

Langford Bwalya repairs a bike for Buffalo Bicycles. ‘Some of the customers think that women can’t do this job,’ he says. ‘But women can do it too. It helps to support gender equality’

Ruth Moonga Gatawa, 22, has been a Buffalo Bike assembly technician for eight months: ‘I started assembling bicycles when I was 19. I used to see my brother fixing bicycles, and he was like: “This is not an easy job that you can do – as a female.” But I was like: “If you can do it, then I can do it as well.” So I’m the kind of girl who is stubborn when it comes to things I want to do. I’m very proud to be working here’

Wyson Lungu, chief executive and founder of
Onyx Connect, the social enterprise behind the pay-as-you-go bike scheme. Following the scheme’s initial pilot – a collaboration with the
Frontier Technologies Hub, funded by UK aid -he aims to expand the initiative to different sectors across the country, with a goal of delivering a million bikes by 2030