Promoting green and affordable methods of shared transportation, giving everyone equal access to cities and increasing low-income earners’ opportunity to participate in the economy

Nodumo Fikile Magadlela

Mobility is a privilege in South Africa at the moment and most of the poor and emerging middle class in the townships have no access to reliable urban transportation. One day, Fikile’s colleague told him about the struggle he was facing as the first college graduate in his family. Having a job meant that he had to buy a car on credit in order to make it to work on time. Many people share this experience, buying a car and getting stuck in debt in order to participate fully in the South African economy. This made Fikile realize that efficient, cheap and accessible mobility is a vital tool to address inequality in developing countries. Being an entrepreneur, he decided to found the bicycle sharing business iBoni to tackle this problem.

Fikile took part in SE Forum’s SE Outreach Accelerator in 2016.

iBoni

iBoni

iBoni was born out of a desire to make it possible for everyone to access the cities by using a cheap, functioning and environmentally friendly transportation system. A mobile application or SMS service (depending on the location) is used to find available bikes at the closest sharing point, and the users are charged for the amount of time they use the bikes. iBoni’s future goal is to expand to also include sharing services for e-cars and e-scooters. The SE Outreach Accelerator will provide Fikile with the support and tools to make iBoni a viable and sustainable business. Being in Sweden will also give him the opportunity to engage with Swedish bike and car-sharing companies to help him decide on the most suitable strategy to take iBoni forward and create bike-friendly cities in Africa.