Monday, May 23, 2011

Bridging the mountain bike path

The march
On Sunday, We set out to Bamboosero Velodrom to bridge a swampy place where mountain bikers could not pass because the place was flooded due to the heavy rains of recent. 

Water had cut off this part of the mountain bike route and cyclists preferred to avoid it every time.  Those who ventured into the path would come out all covered with muddy sticking water. 

This was unfortunate because this shortened the route and made it less interesting.  The solution was to make a short wooded bridge so that the worst part can be raised above the marshy swampy water.  This is what we set out to do on Sunday.
Offloading wood for the bridge


















Tuesday, May 17, 2011

EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR A LIFE OF DIGNITY


This wonderful speech at the ASEAN conference holds true to all developing nations.  Copyright of its author.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR A LIFE OF DIGNITY
 
Address by Rodolfo C. Severino, Secretary-General
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
at the conference on Social Development and Poverty Reduction
Through Vocational and Technical Education organized
by the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry,
the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies,
and the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation,
and sponsored by the Hanns Seidel Foundation

Yangon, 6 February 2002

            I welcomed with great eagerness the invitation to participate in this conference.  It is not just because I have been associated in one way or another with all its sponsors, although that is a good enough reason.  I have encountered the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry at events involving the ASEAN Economic Ministers and the ASEAN Chambers of Commerce and Industry.  The Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies is headed by a distinguished ASEAN colleague and friend, U Thaung Tun; it used to be led by another friend and colleague in ASEAN, U Aye Lwin, who is one of the moving forces of this conference.  The Hanns Seidel Foundation and the ASEAN Secretariat have collaborated fruitfully in many valuable projects.  And the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation is chaired by my former boss, President Fidel V. Ramos, and is named after another former boss, the late Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Narciso G. Ramos.

         Because of all these, I am happy to be here.

            But I was also attracted by the theme of the conference: “Social Development and Poverty Reduction through Vocational Training and Technical Education in the ASEAN Region.”  Now, the subject of vocational training and technical education sounds like a humdrum matter that would make most people’s eyes glaze in boredom, something of interest only to those in the field.  However, to me, the choice of theme is highly inspired, because it puts vocational training and technical education in the context of social development and poverty reduction.  The way the subject is presented today gives the work of vocational training and technical education a larger meaning, a meaning beyond developing human resources as a factor of production.  It reminds us that we must upgrade the skills of the human person not just to make him more capable of increasing profits for the capitalist or for the state but, above all, to improve the life of the person and his family, to enhance their dignity through work and honest income, and to enrich society as a community of human beings.  The theme adopted for our conference lends human resource development, of which vocational training and education is an essential part, added weight and gravity and the deep significance that it deserves.

          ASEAN looks at human resource development, including vocational and technical training, from this point of view.  HRD, of course, is essentially a national responsibility, sometimes with international help.  However, we in ASEAN find it useful to cooperate on a regional scale if only to learn from one another, inspire one another with regional examples of “best practices,” and pool our efforts and resources in order to cut costs.

          In this, we give special attention to enabling women and out-of-school youth to gain skills.  We conduct skills competition among the youth.  We are forming a network of skills training institutions.  We are promoting the mutual recognition of skills among the member-states in order to improve workers’ mobility within the region and thus their chances for employment.  We share experiences in helping workers acquire skills in information technology.  We are setting up a monitoring system for labor markets to anticipate changes in demand for labor.  Together with international financial institutions, we advocate the inclusion of human resource development at the core of national development plans.

         At the mandate of ASEAN’s leaders, the ASEAN Secretariat and all ASEAN bodies undertook last year a mid-term review of the implementation of the Ha Noi Plan of Action, which the leaders issued in December 1998 as a guide for ASEAN cooperation in the next six years.  Many of the activities prescribed in the HPA either had been completed or had made substantial progress.   In the case of other projects, we found that we had to step up our work to upgrade the human capacity for their effective implementation.

 HRD Vital to Regional Cooperation

      This has strengthened our conviction that HRD is vital not only to national development but also to regional integration and cooperation.  This is why HRD occupies a central place in the Initiative for ASEAN Integration, or IAI.  The IAI is the program adopted by ASEAN’s leaders as the principal instrument for closing the development gap between ASEAN’s older and newer members.  The program has four components – infrastructure, information and communications technology, regional economic integration, and human resource development.

 Last November, officials from all ten members of ASEAN got together in Phnom Penh to draw up a work plan for carrying out the IAI.  In terms of HRD, the work plan calls for building the capacity of the newer members – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam – to do planning, management and needs assessment for national HRD programs and to draw up annual HRD plans.  It includes the training of trainers, the publication of training manuals, and the provision of scholarships.  The teaching of English – ASEAN’s working language – is stressed.  The work plan also aims to improve vocational training programs, develop training in ICT, strengthen labor market monitoring, and develop a skills recognition system.  HRD occupies a central place in the IAI, because ASEAN’s newer members themselves insist on it, recognizing its critical importance to their development.

 But HRD also runs as a common thread through the three other components of the IAI work plan – infrastructure, ICT and regional economic integration.  For example, HRD is considered as necessary for strengthening the newer members’ capacity to implement the ASEAN agreement on facilitating goods-in-transit.  It is also important for enabling them to participate in ASEAN’s other transport and energy schemes.  The IAI work plan calls for national master plans for developing ICT human resources.  It involves the training of ICT trainers.  It envisions private-sector participation in training local communities in the use of ICT.  The work plan projects the use of ICT in networking ASEAN educational and vocational training centers and for distance-learning.  Of course, the use of ICT for commerce – or e-commerce – requires the training of sellers and buyers and the service-providers that are the link between them.  For government transactions – or e-government – government officials and citizens doing business with government have to be trained.

 To enable the newer members to integrate themselves in the regional economy, the IAI work plan calls for the training of officials to take effective part in the ASEAN Free Trade Area, including the development of skills for negotiating trade agreements and data collection.  The training of customs officers is important for the success of AFTA.  The work plan also envisions skills training for setting up and participating in trade fairs and exhibitions.

 Beyond Economics

              ASEAN thus considers human resources to be of central importance to all its purposes.  Indeed, this importance stands out even if we consider it only from the economic standpoint.  Throughout the history of economic activity, human resources are a vital, even the vital, factor in the production process, in marketing, in distribution, in the whole chain of economic transactions.  This is especially and increasingly so in the processes and development of a knowledge economy.  It is so in a global economy in which services play a larger and larger role.  Investors invariably enter the availability of adequate human resources into their calculations.  One of the first questions investors ask in deciding whether to make their investments -- and where – is this: will I have enough trained, or at least trainable, people to have a good chance for my investment to succeed?  We can truly say that a country’s development and progress largely depend on the availability and quality of its human resources, people with the right skills and the right attitude.  This is obvious enough.

 However, human resource development transcends the merely economic.  At the most fundamental level, it is essential not only to enhance people’s chances of getting jobs and raising their incomes but for the fulfillment of a man’s or a woman’s human potential.  Work has everything to do with human dignity and self-respect.  Think of the millions of human beings, including children, who are forced into illicit, destructive and often fatal occupations and lives of unimaginable degradation and despair for want of the skills required for respectable, dignified and productive work.

 Human resource development also has a profound social and political dimension.  HRD, even vocational training and technical education, produces an enlightened citizenry.  Since higher incomes and a degree of urbanization result from it, HRD builds up the middle class.  It thus lays the necessary foundation for effective, participatory democracy.  With their minds and discernment sharpened, as they become more capable of articulating their interests in an organized way, people are better able and more qualified to participate in their own governance.
 Skilled and educated people are, of course, no guarantee of democracy.  The countries of Eastern Europe and many nations of Latin America have had large numbers of educated and skilled people for many decades, even centuries.  And yet, they have had to submit to autocracies of one form or another and at one time or another.  On the other hand, even in countries that practice electoral democracy and enjoy free speech and a free media, a large skilled and educated middle class is no guarantee of effective governance.  So, even a critical mass of educated and skilled people in a substantial middle class is not an assurance of either the effectiveness of governance or the people’s authentic participation in it.  But, clearly, such a critical mass is essential for governance that is both democratic and effective.

 If our objectives for each country are a polity that is both democratic and effective, sustainable progress for its economy, stability for its society, and a life of dignity for its people, education and training are the indispensable endeavor.  This is why I think Myanmar is doing the right thing in regarding education and training in the context of poverty reduction and social development.  The international community ought to support it and encourage it.  It is the way to go.  It is an effective way, as boycotts and isolation and confrontation often are not.

 The ASEAN Secretariat supports and encourages events like this.  So does the Hanns Seidel Foundation, which has for many years been quietly backing HRD-related activities not only in Myanmar but also in the other newer members of ASEAN and in ASEAN as a whole.  And I welcome the participation of the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation in this endeavor.

 Education and training are the candle of hope lighting the darkness of political inefficacy, poverty, and human degradation.  They are a lot better and more effective than cursing the darkness.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Craig Calfee's Bamboosero in Uganda at EIAAT

Uganda Joins the international hand made quality bicycle manufacturers under the affiliation, promotion and training of world renowned Craig Calfee of Calfee Design.

On this land mark event for Uganda,  Entrepreneurship Institute of Applied and Appropriate technology as the host had 5 trainees from the cycling fraternity.  3 men cyclists, the principal himself, and one woman cyclists.  We used a business model of using sports men and women in the cycling sport who were selected to take part to learn the skills of manufacturing these hand made bicycles out of the abundantly available material bamboo. 

The following reasons were used.

1. Cyclists life in this strenuous and high demand and competitive sport is 30 to 35 years after which performance is expected to decline.  In most developing countries sports people do not prepair for this early retirement when they can no longer perform and earn.

2. A cyclist would be in a better position to make a better quality bicycle.  We would expect them to know what the industry and other sports people needs in a quality bicycle.

3.  This provides employment for the cyclist even if they are still performing at the top of their cycling career.  Sports people in most developing countries do not have a very high education and high paying jobs.

4. To remain on top, the sports person has to put in regular training for at least 6 hours on the road for minimum of 2 days in a week.  This is not going to be accepted by most employing companies as they will suffer loss of production because of the employees absence on these days.  Even if the employee returned to work after the training, he/she will be too exhausted to do anything usefully for the company.  But in our company this is factored into the work program.

5. Cycling is such an expensive sport with good quality professional grade bicycles in the range of $10,000.  Such high quality equipment cannot be easily acquired by our local cycling sports people.  The Ugandan Government doesn't not invest readily in this sport.  The bicycles that were ever received by the National cycling team were received as donations by outsiders.   Without good quality equipment, we cannot expect our sports people to win medals on the international arena.
This project will enable our cyclists gain access to the same quality equipment at a reduced price.  This will give them a chance to compete on equal level with the rest of the participant.  Also spare parts and repair skills which have been missing will be easily available through this project.

A Test race at the end of the 10 days training.

Craig Calfee Arrived in the country on 13th March 2011.  We started training on 15th March 2011  The training was for 10 days. We crowned the training with a bicycle race on 27th March 2011. We had numerous presents to be won by the best participants.  In each of the eight categories the first participant won a very good quality mountain, or road race bicycle.  The children under 10 and 15 also won a quality bicycle.  The second and third of each category each won a medal.  The participating schools had two high quality administrative software packages each valued at Ug. Shs 1,900,000 (about $800).

Background of the Institute.

EIAAT is vocational institute which teaches all categories of people whether literate or illiterate and school leavers a vocation so as to prepare them for a better working life and a bright future.  We offer courses like, tailoring, welding, metal fabrication, electronics and repair, Renewable energy development, bicycle repair, computer use and applications.

Why in all are we in bicycle riding than any other sports activity?
Donations:
Our vocational institute, the second largest of the only 3 active programs in Africa,  receives donations of 40ft containers of second hand bicycles and sawing machines from Pedals for Progress (P4P) of USA New Jersey.  The used bicycles are sold locally.  The major income is used to finance the importation project for more containers.  The surplus is used to finance the vocational institutions administrative costs and its other development activities. This is among the reasons why the institute wants to develop the bicycle sport with in Uganda.

Manufacturing Advantage:
We are so privileged that starting this year Uganda will be able to manufacture bicycles of its own from bamboo.  On this occasion of the race, we will be hosting the training of manufacturers at EIAAT center in Rubaga. 
  1. EIAAT (Entrepreneurship Institute of Applied and Appropriate Technology Ltd.) (5 participants)
  2. LBCCVSS (Lake Bunyonyi Christian Community Vocational & Secondary School) (5 participants)
  3. Gulu Hope Group (1 participant)
The reasons why the bicycle shall be of bamboo are:
  1.  Bamboo which forms some of the raw material is grows readily any where in the country and is available in plenty.  It does not need to be imported. 
  2. The basic skills needed to make a bamboo bicycle frame can easily be taught to the local not technical and not highly educated people. 
  3. This business model is most suited for us to earn foreign currency by exporting the finished products.  This is targeted for the European and USA market where it’s most appreciated and these people have the purchasing power.
  4. A bicycle is the most convenient means of transport in Uganda a developing country with low income and poor roads. 
  5. Manufacturing it locally will make it affordable to the local people.  
  6. The bicycle frames out of bamboo are very stiff, transferring power efficiently; are double resisting damage from steel and impact are comfortable, surpassing aluminum, steel, titanium ,and most carbon flame in smoothness because it’s out of a nature plant.
  7. Our cycling sport will receive a boost as the sports people will have a high quality equipment at affordable price.
Promotional advantage: 
This year EIAAT has been privileged to host one of the most prominent hand made bicycle maker/ designer from USA called Craig Calfee as the guest of honor on the cycling competition which was held on 27th March 2011 at the conclusion of bamboo manufacturing workshop. This will boost the cycling clubs, associations, and individuals of Uganda and improve on the talents of the youth.

Cycling club formulation:
We hope by organizing this event continuously we shall help in one way or the other in the formulation of cycling clubs in Uganda.
This race will be conducted each year in March and it will be indicated on the Uganda’s cycling Associations calendar.

Tree planting campaign for afforestation

We also hope to start a bamboo planting campaign as an afforestation program.  This will spread out into the remote parts of the country.  During this program we will be taking the bamboo bicycles and holding bicycle races to encourage cycling in the area where we are holding the program. We will also be supplying bamboo seedlings for planting, and establishing bamboo plant nurseries.

Applied Bike Race 20011 registration.  

Registration is targeted to Starts 15th Feb 2011
Age 15 and below                           free
Female                                            free
Other individuals registration         3,000/=
Group Categories
Primary schools                         50,000/=
Secondary schools                   100,000/=
Tertiary institutions                   100,000/=
Individual groups                     100,000/=
Company/ organization            150,000/=
Groups shall be of six (6) members but you can include as many as you can in the same name but categorized into different groups.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Digital Divide in Uganda

At the end of 2010, EIAAT (Entrepreneurship Institute of Applied and Appropriate Technology Ltd) undertook a survey to find out the effect of the digital divide in Uganda.  it set the target to cover 30 schools and 30 internet cafes mostly in the city and its suburbs.  This is the area which is believed to be most up to date with the digital divide.  To our surprise, the report showed that not only the majority of the public in these organizations did not under stand the term digital divide, they actually did not have a clue as to how to go about bridging it.

We believe this was a step to start to understand the problem and thus devise means of bridging this gap.

Please read the report and make your comment where appropriate.  Send the comments to infocomc5@gmail.com

Monday, January 3, 2011

EIAAT Donates Bicycles to Primary going children of Bright future Primary School

Some of the donated bicycles being arranged for loading on the pickup.

Loading the bicycles for Bright future primary school

The vehicle carrying the bicycles arrives at the town of the primary school and it is received by the excited Head Teacher as he waits for some of the students to arrive and offload them.  The local villagers in the town look on..

Some students give a test drive to the newly arrived bikes.

The students off help in offloading the bicycles to be taken down at the school











Hand over documents being given by the propriator of EIAAT to the principal and head teacher of Bright future Primary school for signing.

The bicycles are paraded at the primary school compound by the students who delivered them from the pick up.









.Some of the school blocks of Bright future primary school,



In the classroom of on  of the blocks of the school.






















The school compound of Bright future primary school.

 Class room

































The Some of the cheerful teachers as they work on the students papers and prepare study materials.





















In Kawempe, at some of the less effluent and densely populated places of the city suburbs.

Activities of Entrepreneurship Institute of Applied & Appropriate Technology (EIAAT)


Background
EIAAT Entrepreneurship Institute of Applied and Appropriate Technology ltd located at Stensera Rd, Nabunya zone Rubaga Division on the outskirts of Kampala, is vocational institute which teaches school drop outs and school leavers a vocation so as to prepare them for a working life and a bright future.  We offer courses like, tailoring, welding, metal fabrication, bicycle repair and computer use and applications.   

Private institutions are amongst the most important providers of vocational training.   Currently around 45% of all vocational training available in Uganda is provided by such private institutions.
Properly trained workers is the prime requirement for the reduction of poverty.  This will provide a hope for a better future for Ugandans and the economy.   Vocational institutions develop, sustain and expand a countries industries and contribute to economic growth as a whole.  

Unfortunately there are not enough vocational institutions or appropriate opportunities for Ugandan youth to learn vocational skills.   The private vocational institutions face many problems.  There are widely differing standards. Vocational institutions have failed to gain recognition by the government or by the people who should be benefiting from them.   Poor administration and insufficient communication between the training institutions are some of the problems. 

Access to the few institutions remains difficult.  Because of limited resources of the private institutions they can only finance themselves with difficulty.  These institutions mainly rely on school fees from students to finance themselves.  This results in high fees.  This is why the majority of Ugandans are too poor to pay the school fees. 

EIAAT is owned by two directors Charles Mulamata and Joyce Kayongo.  A married couple.  They are also involved in other business.  Metal fabrication, solar and renewable energy and energy saving stoves.

Our vocational institute receives donations of 40ft containers of second hand bicycles and sawing machines from Pedals for Progress (P4P) of USA New Jersey.  The used bicycle are sold locally.  The major income is used to finance the importation project for more containers.  The surplus is used to finance the vocational institutions administrative costs and its other development activities.   

The second hand sawing machines are used in our vocational institutes tailoring division.  A student starts with a sawing machine and learns how to use, service and repair it.  The student, if interested in this particular sawing machine, can start to pay for it in installment as the studies progress.  If at the end of the course the sawing machine is fully paid then the student takes the sawing machine. 

This scheme encourages the student to plan for the future, teaches the student to save, and encourages proper handling and looking after their future sawing machine.  This introduces the student, in a practical way, to the life of  entrepreneurship. 

We are the largest, and most expensive project.
EIAAT is the largest program in East Africa and the second largest in the whole of Africa for importation of bicycles and sawing machines.  If the container coming in December has 450 bikes we would be at 1,865 bikes and 187sawing machines so far imported and supplied to  Ugandans since the project started.
 The cost of freight to Kampala is about $10,000 for a 40ft container.  This you add other costs, import duty and other taxes. 

We had failed to raise this money and our project had come to a halt.   It is only through the hard work, persistence and dedication to the cause, by David of P4P that he was able to solicit funds to cover the freight cost.  We are indeed grateful to David and the funders for awakening this project.  We are indeed lucky that  EIAAT in Uganda is one of the active participant in P4P program. 
  The other expenses are transport, loading offloading especially during customs check and finally to the final destination go down.

At this go down there are expenses like off loading, sorting, grouping, counting, and the regular administration costs which include staff salaries, electricity, phone charges etc to enable an establishment like EIAAT to function normally.    EIAAT was able to complete its store so it was saved from paying rent but since we are in a prime location we have to take the value of a storage facility of that nature in our location into consideration and include it as a cost to the project.

Therefore even if the bicycles are donated, we the local agents must sell them to recover these costs and remain sustainable.  The bicycles and sawing machines cannot be donated by us the agents.  The price we sell the products,  however are very reasonable that is why we can supply to local whole sale traders so that they can retail the bicycles.

Benefit to the customers of the bicycles sold by the institute are enormous.  These bicycles are sold at a low price.  Bicycles are very useful to our country as some roads in remote areas of the villages are in very poor conditions which are impossible to navigate by cars.  In some of these places there is no public transport and the only means of transport is a bicycle or to move on foot cars do not reach easily.  These places which cannot be reached by cars are left undeveloped as the local people do not have easy means of mobility to go to where services can be provided.    Also service providers find it difficult to service a wide  area without convenient transport means.
The increasing cost of fossil fuel also contributes to the demand for an alternate more convenient less expensive means of transport.   The easier, almost free, all weather, all road available on demand  means of transport offered by the bicycle is the most appropriate for such areas in a developing country.

Our Project is based in Kampala the capital of Uganda.  We have received requests and plan to expand our distribution network by setting up agents throughout the country.  So far we have representatives in the following districts.  Others have expressed interest and we are considering supplying to them.

Masaka, Jinja, and Gulu.  People in these areas are our Whole sale traders
Sales      
Bicycles Sales

We target 3 to 6 containers every year.  But of late we have been hardly making one container per year.  Our program suffered a set back and it was nearly wiped out if not for the assistance received from David of (P4P), for whom we are very grateful, when he solicited a grand to enable a shipment of one 40 feet container to us.  We now Expect that container in November 2010.  The sales of the products from this container will awaken our project, afterwords we will be sustainable and will be able to get to our target of 3 to 6 containers every year. 

Conclusion.
We expect to import 3 to 6 containers every year for the coming 2011.  That is approximately 2,700 bicycles and 300 sawing machines every year.  This is coupled with the number of trained students in our vocational institution who are able to gain skills and find work or start their own enterprise.

Offloading our end of the year 40ft container of bicycles and sawing machines



Funding of kick start container.
We are thank full to the funding organisations that were identified by David of P4P for this kickstart container.  The funders are:
1. HWMF (The Helen & William Mazer Foundation)
2. Clif Bar Family Foundation.
This donation has enabled this project to resume its activity.  
The  Container Arrives.
Our 40ft Container arrived in the country on 16th Dec 2010.  But we were able to clear it on 23rd December 2010.  It took us time to get the money to pay for the taxes.  Delay results into demorage, storage charges, container charges etc.

Uganda is the most expensive (in terms of transport) of these programs because of the distances involved and the fact that Uganda is land locked.   
We also have a high exchange rate affecting us because of the weakening  Uganda Shilling to the US$.  The last time we offloaded a container 1US$ was equivalent to Shs1,850.  But today it is Shs. 2,230. and rising fast.  Putting in consideration that the lower rate was two years ago does not help matters any because our income generating capacity has not seriously improved since then to compensate for the weaker shilling.
On top of that we have taxes to pay. 

10% import duty, 18%  Import Vat, 15% internal vat, 20% Sir charge on all second hand goods, 6% withholding tax, an unknown excess top up charge.  At the end of the year 30% cooperation tax.

Our  Chief sponsor

Our vocational training institute is sponsored by Pedals for Progress a company in New Jersey USA.  This Social Entrepreneur collects bicycles from Americans meant for the overworked land fill and sends them to developing countries all over the world.  We are lucky to be part of this wonderful program on behalf of our country.   Currently there are 3 active programs out of the original 9 in Africa.  We are the second largest in Africa and the largest and only surviving one in East Africa.

Bicycle Showroom Shop/Store Project.

This program had run into cash flow problems as we diverted the cash into construction of a store and showroom for offloading the container.  We could not raise the money to import these bicycles.
This project was worth it even though it wiped out our working capital and cost us two years of inactivity.
This store saves us Ug Shs.1,500,000 (or $643 at exchange rate of 1US$ = 2330 Ug Shs.) Per month
Or $7,725 each year.
The Shop/showroom section of the store.

We have a Bicycle display rack outside on which we assemble all the bicycles on display.  It has a capacity of 10 bicycles.  It accommodates both children and adult bikes easily.  With fast mounting and easy locking facility for the bikes on display.  It is raised such that in case of rain the bikes do not get soiled from the dirty water from the rain splatter.

Very spacious Showroom

Inside the showroom is quite spacious, allowing sorting of different bikes in different categories so that a customer can make a choice from the different types without having to move the bikes or climb on top of other bikes.  This is very important to preserve the bikes quality and to allow proper appreciation of the quality.  This also affords us easy cleaning of bikes as we can move easily within different rows of bikes and reach each bike easily.


Stock Taking, Categorising, and pricing.

The first day is very tough.  It is better for the container to arrive in the evening because we can work without much disturbance from the traders.  They would like to pick the bikes as they come down from the container.  Also if there are many people on the container they remove small items from the bikes.  it is very difficult to control them.
We make categories of mountain, racer, city bike, children  bikes and group these further into Excellent, Good, Fair, and poor in each category, then we give each group in a category a wholesale and retail price.


And then the Traders arrive

We sell the goods we receive through our country wide distributors.  Majority come from the city center -  Nakasero and the suburbs - Ndeeba, Nateete, Kibuye.  We also sell to up-county agents and across the borders.  There was a rush for the first pick.  Each agent groups his pick and puts it in a selected place.  Some outside, others in other rooms.  The first days sales are brisk.

We use the money mainly for freight for the next container and the balance to fund the vocational institute.  Our target is to import 3 to 6 containers a year and 300 sawing machines.

A bicycle means many families can be taken out of poverty and a sawing machine provides a much needed employment.

David also is carrying the project forward and has succeeded in negotiating with Mr. Claig Calfee of  www.calfeedesign.com a world renowned designer and manufacturer of high quality bicycles made out of Carbon frames Sapphire.  Through his project of making Bambo bicycle frames in developing countries.  He has started design and manufacturing establishments around the world.  See  www.bamboosero.com  We at EIAAT are extremely luck to be one of the selected, to be trained, local manufacturer of bicycle frames to be made out of Bamboo for export to EU and American countries.

This is a wonderful project which will use local materials, introduce new skills and employment to local people and earn the country foreign exchange.


In this container we cleared through customs 8 epoxy glue which will be used for making these bamboo frames for the bicycles.



Mulamata Charles
Principal EIAAT