Comments on: The Bicycles of Ethiopia – Photos From a Bike-Obsessed Traveler

By: Tselot Kifle

Tselot Kifle — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:34:41 +0000

Greetings ,
I know this is an old post but I had to comment. I’ll make this short sweet.
-I am an Ethiopian born in america
-I love bikes
-Italian influence made road racing very popular in Ethiopia
-My father raced with the Ethiopian olympic team in the 70′s
- If you’re interested I can share some old photos of my father and his buddies, racing around Addis Abba and training on legnano bicycles.

By: Shah

Shah — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:34:35 +0000

I like to import CKD bicycles.
SHAH

By: shah

shah — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:31:58 +0000

pl/.send me pricelist ofr CKD bicycles

By: Mary Moreau

Mary Moreau — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:07:57 +0000

Thanks for the pictures of Dessie. It’s good for us to have a sense of Ethiopia 2010 supplementing memories from the 60s. I’ll be more in touch another time.

By: 27 months » Blog Archive » By Fixie Through Lagos, Nigeria

27 months » Blog Archive » By Fixie Through Lagos, Nigeria — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:07:11 +0000

[...] enjoyed this post from Bikejuju, you may also be interested in the beautiful photography and story, Bicycles of Ethiopia. Share and [...]

By: Bikejuju » Blog Archive » Pic of the Day: Shade Tree Mechanic, Africa

Bikejuju » Blog Archive » Pic of the Day: Shade Tree Mechanic, Africa — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:07:05 +0000

[...] on the Phoenix theme, this Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user (and all around digital maven) whiteafrican [...]

By: Groover

Groover — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:00:05 +0000

I found your site through the link that Meligrosa posted at her blog Bikes and The City. What an interesting article. Thanks for the sharing your experience and pictures.

By: meligrosa

meligrosa — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:34:01 +0000

thanks for sharing this with us all Tom, such a wonderful post.
We might not all have the same economical social levels around the world, but bikes, cameras and coffee somehow bring us all together in a certain particular peaceful way.
cheers /xo.meli

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:49:04 +0000

Hey Andrew, thanks for the awesome comment. I'm in Africa a few times a year and I've been preparing a post on the various "Afribike" projects you mention, including Worldbike. In fact it was a ride in Windhoek with Michael from BEN Nambia that more or less made my mind up to start blogging about bikejuju for real. Stay tuned.

By: Andrew Hall

Andrew Hall — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:37:32 +0000

Hi, thanks for the great article and pictures. I work for Worldbike currently down in Kenya and thought I might add a few thoughts for those interested in East African bicycle technologies.
Phoenix bikes are also the most popular bikes in Kenya. They’re one of the few companies that makes both the ubiquitous roadsters, often called Black Mambas, and mountain bikes. Interestingly they’re also the only Chinese company importing black mambas that I know of. The 20+ other brands are Indian.
The growing popularity of mountain bikes in Kenya is relatively new and it’s hard to know if it will last. The quality is so bad and the available spare parts are equally bad along with being expensive. Most MTBs that you see on the streets have brakes that are in some state of dysfunction and drivetrains that have been converted to single speed. There’s no difference between these bikes and a $50 Wal-Mart bike and unsurprisingly the results after a couple months of riding is the same.
The Phoenix bike shown in the first picture is one of the bikes that I’ve purchased and rode in order to get some of the local flavor. My experience is indicative of all the local MTBs. First, when you buy a bike at a shop it is assembled as a way of getting all the parts together in one place but not as a way of making it rideable. In order to reduce shipping costs, bikes are shipped “completely knocked down” or CKD in boxes of four or five units meaning that the parts for each bike have to be separated out from the others. The first thing you do with a new bike is take it to a mechanic where they will reassemble it correctly. How good that mechanic is is the probably the most important factor when it comes to the longevity of the bike. I rebuilt my bike myself using 10 years of experience as a professional mechanic and good quality tools. Unfortunately most local mechanics, despite their many skills, don’t know the finer points of MTB mechanics and results aren’t alwas so hot.
Overall, the frame was fine, actually heavier and with much worse welding than other bikes of similar price. Heavy doesn’t necessarily mean strong, though it might. Plastic thump shifters break quickly especially because the cable housing has no plastic liner to reduce friction. The force required to shift becomes much more of a task than a single thumb (or thumb shifter) can handle alone. Plastic brake levers are very soft and fragile if the bike falls over. The brake surfaces on the steel rims are beveled inward so sharply that the brake pad has a difficult time making contact. Steel rims also don’t stop when they’re wet. The cottered cranks are fine… except that they’re too thin and will bend. Cottered cranks are actually better here than square taper since the threads on the square taper BB axles and their corresponding nuts or bolts always strip when you try to tighten them. The BB axles appear to be cast not forged. Actually all threads are the same whether it’s the headset, the BB, the spokes, or the wheel bearing cones. They always strip even the first time that you try to tighten them. The thread cutting is always poor and the metal is always soft. Lastly, the derailleurs are okay but very flimsy and loose. So while they work for awhile they aren’t a long-term investment.
So that’s the story (longer than it was intended to be). The black mambas have their own list of quality issues that lead people to spend a new bike’s worth of money every year on their upkeep, but I’ll leave that for another day. Each in their own way, groups like Worldbike, ITDP, World Bicycle Relief, Project Rwanda, and Zambikes, to name a few, all have efforts to promote better quality bikes in East Africa… but it’s tough road to ride.
Thanks again.