Taxi!: The "Boda Boda"

One of the cheapest form of transport in Kenya is the “Boda Boda” literally meaning “Border-to-border”, a bicycle ride from one countries boarder immigration offices through no-mans land to the immigration offices of the bordering country customs office.

The boda-boda taxis are part of the African bicycle culture, they started in the 1960s and 1970s and are still spreading from their origin on the Kenyan - Ugandan border to other regions. The name originated from a need to transport people across the "no-mans-land" between the border posts without the paperwork involved with using motor vehicles crossing the international border. This started in southern border crossing town of Busia (Uganda), where there is over half a mile between the gates and quickly spread to the northern border town of Malaba (Kenya). The bicycle owners would shout out boda-boda (border-to-border) to potential customers - not to be confused with poda-poda, which is a form of shared taxi in Sierra Leone.

While the boda-boda bicycle is still spreading to other areas, in its area of origin, especially in cities in Kenya and Uganda, the bicycles are more and more replaced by motorbikes. The motorbike-taxis have taken the name bodaboda as well, though in much of Uganda, the Swahili term for motorbike, piki-piki, is used to describe motorbike boda-bodas. In 2004 it was estimated that more than 200 000 men in Uganda were working as bicycle bodaboda and already almost 90 000 as motorized motorbike bodaboda.