Above: a high-end example of Calfee's bamboo cargo bicycles.

We received a call from a team working with carbon fiber maestro Craig Calfee on a bamboo bicycle distribution project in Ghana, funded by the Earth Institute at Columbia
University.

For years I've seen Calfee's beautiful handmade bamboo bicycles at trade shows. Only recently did I realize that he has a strong interest in using the bamboo techniques to benefit people in the developing world.

The advantage of bamboo bikes, as it relates to international development, is that the requirement for electricity in the manufacturing process is removed or reduced. Bike frames can be assembled completely with hand tools. In theory this opens up wide array of places that bicycles can be manufactured.

The requirement for high-quality parts is still there, however. So the team picked Ghana as a project location, in the hopes that Village Bicycle Project's work distributing parts and tools in Ghana would mean it was easier to find spares and tools. [VBP, a charity headed by David Peckham that is based in Idaho and Ghana, has imported thousands of bikes to Ghana in the past decade. But more importantly he recognized early on the need for quality parts and tools. Without specific tools like a bottom bracket remover, freewheel remover, and cassette tool, the local mechanics can't service the drivetrains of donated used American bikes.]

Calfee's work in Ghana is encouraging on many levels. Here's another highly respected name in the bike industry turning his attention to the transportation needs of the world's poor. But will frames built of local materials in local workshops be the answer? Can they be produced at a low enough price?

Worldbike's long-term partner Kickstart International has moved production of their poverty-fighting water pumps to China. More than anyone in the bicycle development scene, Kickstart understood the tradeoffs between creating local production jobs and building the manufacturing infrastructure in Africa, and helping people with affordable technologies. They chose to focus on the latter, having concluded that far more people would benefit from a lower cost, higher quality pump, than from creating local production jobs.

Will bamboo bicycles encounter a different reality? Worth noting is that the cost of shipping a bicycle from China to Africa can approach the manufacturing cost of the bicycle itself. Also worth noting is that quality steel, suitable for welding bicycle frames, is not always available in Africa. Could a locally built, bamboo bicycle frame do an end run around these problems? Again, we wish Calfee and his teammates the best results in Ghana and await the photos and results of their work.