Teaming up around a bicycle

Teaming up around a bike, Gabriel’s International School, Kumbungo Road, August 2023

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.

Aerial photographs show how Tamale’s layout impacts the routes cyclists take. Since the 1910s, Tamale has evolved from a rural village into a colonial administrative center with shops. Today it features a vibrant city center with a large mosque, markets, bus stations, and an immense flyover. Cyclists navigate these crowded spaces amid motorized traffic.

Over the past two decades, motorcycles and more recently tricycle taxis have overshadowed bicycles, prompting safety concerns and debates about traffic policies and the need for bike lanes. Urbanization in Tamale has intertwined with rural policies shaping spatial developments within and beyond the town: the peri-urban agriculture, the surrounding areas of the government-initiated dam construction, large-scale rice projects, and agricultural mechanization. For farmers bicycles have been crucial too in dealing with the city’s expansion and in balancing urban and rural activities like farming, livestock rearing, firewood provision, and selling produce.