F K Day, president of the charity World Bicycle Relief, was due to speak to an audience at the Radisson Blu Hotel. His talk was to focus on the charity’s work with its Buffalo Bicycle and the role that it plays in mobilising rural communities in Africa, in particular.
The Buffalo Bicycle is the charity’s trademark bike, which has been designed to be rugged enough to withstand tough conditions, and simple enough to be assembled locally.
The charity has been in operation for a decade, during which time it has delivered more than 420,000 Buffalo Bicycles to developing countries around the world.
WBR aims to break down barriers to achieve everyday tasks in the developing world by producing and distributing the bicycle to isolated areas. The primary barriers are considered to be distance and, given that walking is often the primary mode of transport, fatigue.
The kinds of tasks with which the Buffalo Bicycle is intended to help include school attendance, visiting health clinics and delivering goods to local markets.
Mr Day is also the executive vice president of SRAM Corporation, the largest bicycle component manufacturer in the USA. He said that the work of WBR had allowed him to see how powerful bicycles can be to the people who need them most.
‘I’ve spent most of my life designing and manufacturing high-performance bicycle components,’ he said. ‘But I think the most powerful bicycle I’ve ever seen is one in the hands of a woman building her business and fighting to gain new markets, or one in the hands of a schoolgirl fighting for her education.’
