A common silhouette in rural Africa.
I was at Seattle’s Alki beach today soaking up some sun with my sweetie and plotting how we’re going to sell a gazillion copies of her upcoming book, and I saw a woman riding a Kona AfricaBike One go past. I’d never seen one in real life before, but it was a stylish black onespeed step-through, a classic-looking bike whose profile really stood out and was pretty instantly recognizable.
Kona’s doing a cool thing with these bikes, designing them from the ground up for the needs of rural health care outreach workers in Africa, and then delivering a thousand of them in Africa (for every two sold, they donate/deliver one to Africa). Their blog about the project has more information.
My friends at Bicycle Empowerment Network in Namibia have been recipients of some of the bikes. Here’s a testimonial from one of their peer outreach workers.
