Breaking the Cycle
A joint programme with The OR Foundation that trains women working as kayayei — Ghana's female head porters — to assemble, repair, sell and service BEEP bicycles, as owners of the business rather than recipients of a donation.
A manufacturing programme meets a livelihoods programme
BEEP needs a distribution and service network in the north. Mabilgu needs dignified, durable work for women leaving head-carrying. Breaking the Cycle is the same twenty thousand bicycles, routed through the women who will sell and maintain them.
BEEP
Trans-Sahara Industries, working with the Ghana TVET Service and under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, is manufacturing and distributing twenty thousand locally made bicycles to rural students in Ghana for whom a long and hazardous commute is the barrier to staying in school.
Mabilgu
The OR Foundation's initiative creating alternative economic pathways, educational opportunities and holistic support systems for women and girls working as kayayei. It is the recruitment, curriculum and wrap-around-support side of this partnership.
From head-carrying to owning the storefront
The programme is a training pipeline with a business at the end of it. Each step hands the participant more of the operation, and the last step is the one that makes the network self-sustaining.
Recruitment
Technical training
Micro-franchise
Service network
Bicycles
Training and transitioning women working as kayayei into franchise owners, assembly technicians and retailers of BEEP cargo and commuter bicycles.
Motorcycles
Scaling the retail, distribution and maintenance network to include BEEP electric motorcycles, adding the electrical skillsets required to service and charge them.
One thousand bicycles, twenty-three districts
The first phase of Breaking the Cycle targets the Northern and Upper East regions — the same rural districts where the commute to school is longest.
These are the targets set out in the memorandum of understanding between Trans-Sahara Industries and The OR Foundation. They are commitments to a shared plan, not results achieved.
Who does what
Neither organisation is subcontracting to the other. TSI builds and trains; The OR Foundation recruits, supports and distributes. The programme only works if both halves hold.
Trans-Sahara Industries
- Manufacturing & supply
- Sourcing materials, manufacturing and quality control of the BEEP bicycles to agreed specifications.
- Technical training
- Developing and delivering the assembly, repair and maintenance curriculum for apprentices, in consultation with The OR Foundation.
- Logistics
- Primary transport of bicycles to central distribution hubs across the designated districts.
- Government liaison
- Managing the relationship with the Ghana TVET Service and the Ministry of Education for programmatic alignment and regulatory compliance.
- Planning & scoping
- Information sharing and scoping support, including the procurement and test assembly of bicycles by prospective participants.
The OR Foundation
- Apprentice recruitment
- Identifying and recruiting eligible participants, and providing psycho-social and foundational wrap-around support.
- Curriculum synchronisation
- Aligning the technical curriculum with existing Mabilgu programme content and practice.
- Assembly trial
- Purchasing an initial batch of BEEP bicycles and kits to be assembled as a trial, to scope and plan programme expansion.
- Purchasing & distribution
- On securing dedicated project financing, managing the purchase of bicycle kits for assembly and distribution across the designated districts.
- Funding support
- Supporting TSI in securing capital from donors, impact investors and development finance institutions.
The bicycles are built. The financing is the gap.
Breaking the Cycle is structured, staffed on both sides and cleared through the TVET and Ministry of Education channel. What it needs is project finance for the distribution phase. If that is what your institution does, we should talk.