By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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We hate them and love them in equal measure. The two-wheel taxis that started with a few manual bicycles half a century ago at the Kenya-Uganda border and today employ a couple of million East African riders as motorised boda boda are as nasty as they are useful. Now, they are set to lead the region’s energy transition.

Both in Kenya and Uganda, where they are recognised as major killers, boda bodas are setting the pace for electrification of road transport. Serious investments are taking place in both countries for battery swapping. But you really have to search hard to find equal investments in charge stations for cars.

Let us face it: The majority of East Africans are too poor to afford new cars, where “majority" could as well mean 99 percent of the people.

A “new” car here sometimes means a write-off in Japan which, instead of heading to the scrap yard, is sent to Africa and still fetch some money when its sale value in the country of origin is below zero. The East African “new” car is often older than the person driving it.

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So don’t expect East Africans to be in a hurry to buy electric cars, which cost more than equivalent new fuel-driven cars. Electric cars are also a threat to roads and flyovers in Europe due to their weight, so don’t expect us to quickly adjust the road budgets, sorry, road debts, to accommodate heavy small EVs. So, the hated boda bodas seriously going electric right here are lighting the way to energy transition.

The explanation could be that the boda boda electrification is purely private sector-driven. In Uganda, the road distance from Masaka through Kampala to Jinja, which is 208 kilometres, already has a few dozen battery swap points.

A couple of private companies that are planting electric bikes here already boast several thousands on the road and are working round the clock to manufacture more. They claim electric bikes made in Uganda are already made of 40 percent local content, with “only” 60 percent of the parts being imported. But so what, even if 100 percent of the parts were imported when 100 percent of the used car content is imported?

A few weeks back, I asked the ageless, eminent Ugandan sociologist professor Tarsis Kabwegyere (he was already a professor about 50 years ago when I was a little schoolboy) to explain the growth of the boda boda industry despite all our misgivings against it.

Without hesitation, he answered that boda bodas are simply filling a gap the systems are not filling, or have created, and so have to be here. So, a failed public transport system, failed physical planning that makes it impossible to have enough roads and light rails to access most homes by car, all make boda boda a necessity.

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The boda boda riders know they are needed and hated, so they have to rely on their smarts to survive. Ask any of them what they fear most and invariably they’ll answer that it is being taken to a big hospital if injured. They have this conspiracy theory that once taken there, the health workers will do all they can to help the injured passenger and then swiftly amputate the rider’s leg, even if the only injury he has is a scratch in the cheek, to take as many of them out of business as possible.

So, to survive and thrive quickly enough to become rich and get off the road, they are now switching to electric bikes. Why? They only cost a quarter to power than the petrol ones. They swear that the amount it costs in fuel to drive a bike for 50 kilometres is enough to charge an electric bike to run 200km!

While the cost of buying the two bike types is about the same, they say the e-rider will only need two years to retire while the fuel rider needs eight years. That is if each doesn’t lose a leg, which would hasten the retirement — into poverty.

So, as the governments drag their feet with investing in transport electrification, the private sector is electrifying the two wheelers as a matter of urgency.