Tamale Central Mosque

Cycling through, Tamale central mosque townscape, 2024

Bicycles Forever – The Tamale Experience” is a research project about the rich history and cultural significance of bicycles in Ghana with a special focus on Tamale.

The exhibition is part of the project "Cycling Cities: The African Experience" which aims to explore and document the evolution of bicycle commuting in various African cities. It highlights the importance of considering local contexts in developing cycling cultures and emphasises the need for scholarly research to inform policy decisions.

Tamale’s patchwork of rural and urban areas makes bicycles vital to get around. For many, bicycles are essential for livelihood: bicycles are beasts of burden to transport goods and people. Traders rely on bicycles to peddle goods along the road or between home and market, farmers move crops, wood, and fodder across the city and at its outskirts.

Tamale’s Education Ridge, a zone dotted with schools, also shows the importance of cycling. Every day students take the road to bike to school.
In Northern Ghana cycling is part of youth culture. Parents help children to get a bicycle and to navigate it safely. Kids value the bicycle because it takes you places: to school, to markets, to run errands. And, bicycles are also fun, turning cycling into play: the young into artists on wheels and lovers of sportive contests.