Riding a motorbike in Uganda was something only men could do. At least that is what Allen Kisakye Butundu was told when she said she wanted to learn to ride one. “The community were shocked to see a female rider. Some people would even shout things at me and chase me,” she says.
The 27-year-old decided to learn to ride a motorbike two years ago. Initially, the decision was to save money on travel between the capital, Kampala, and the more rural areas where she worked as a social worker. But she is now one of just a few female riders of boda boda, as motorbike taxis are known, out of an estimated 1 million in Uganda. She is also one of only three women working for SafeBoda, a Uganda-based startup that employs about 26,000 riders.
