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Boda boda riders conduct an accident simulation
It is Friday evening, my Nyamiyaga best friend and I are in the thick of traffic driving for a chill after a long hauling week.
I’m jazzing her my Kyankwanzi experience of about five years ago. It is as if it were yesterday; the morning runs, the classes, the discipline (orders), the drills, singing and those things typical of National Leadership Institute (NALI).
And all of a sudden, a boda boda rider rams onto the side of our car with a female passenger. He gathers his boda boda and scatters. You know them. Speeds away and leaves the scene and the passenger. When did this become acceptable culture?
My Nyamiyaga friend, jokingly suggests, these chaps become alumnis of Kyankwanzi. And come to think of it, she could be right. Uganda’s boda boda industry has become one of the largest employers in the country.
There are well over a million boda boda riders, supporting millions of dependents through transport, deliveries, tourism, agriculture, trade and other services. Before dawn breaks, they are already carrying workers to offices, children to school, the sick to health facilities, traders to markets, deliveries, and CJs your breakfast later.
They are the arteries through which much of Uganda’s informal economy flows. Yet despite their importance, the sector continues to battle a reputation that is difficult to defend. Dangerous overtaking. Riding on pavements. Ignoring traffic lights.
Verbal abuse. Criminal infiltration. Poor customer care. Every Ugandan has either witnessed these behaviours or experienced them firsthand. The unfortunate consequence is that many have come to believe this is simply the nature of the boda business. It is not.
It is the consequence of insufficient investment in the people behind the handlebars. According to official road safety reports, more than 4,000 people die annually in road crashes, with motorcycles involved in a significant proportion of fatalities and serious injuries.
These figures should concern every policymaker. But they should also challenge us to think differently. Road crashes are not merely engineering failures. They are often human failures. Roads do not overtake dangerously. Motorcycles do not ignore traffic lights. People do.
That is why Uganda’s response cannot rely solely on stricter enforcement or heavier penalties. We must invest in character as much as we invest in infrastructure. Imagine if every boda boda rider spent one month at the NALI in Kyankwanzi.
It is a leadership training institute teaching practical skills that improve everyday life. Road safety. Defensive riding. Customer care. Financial literacy. Entrepreneurship. Emotional intelligence. Drug abuse prevention. Mental health awareness. First aid.
Civic responsibility. Environmental stewardship. Digital literacy. Constitutional values. Tax awareness. Cooperative development. This would not merely produce safer riders but better citizens as well.
NALI gives a kind of lessons many people never receive after leaving school. Many riders earn decent daily incomes, yet because the work is informal and income arrives in small amounts, saving consistently becomes difficult.
Training in budgeting, saving, insurance, Sacco participation and business management could gradually transform thousands of riders into entrepreneurs. That is not merely social policy. It is economic development. This conversation is not really about boda bodas.
It is about Uganda. The quality of a nation is reflected in everybody; in its taxi drivers, teachers, traders, nurses, farmers and boda boda riders. Maybe, national transformation could begin exactly there. Not with another law.
Not with another building. But with one ordinary citizen deciding to become extraordinary multiplied across Uganda’s million plus boda boda riders, then a month in Kyankwanzi would become one wise investment.
The author is a concerned citizen.
Related
, https://observer.ug/viewpoint/what-if-boda-boda-riders-spent-month-at-kyankwanzi/
