Entrepreneur|Climate Trailblazer| Smart Mobility Specialist| Philanthropist|
Inspired by her childhood challenges of making the arduous journey to school, Bernice Dapaah went on to build the globally recognised eco-brand Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative. As a young girl, she had to travel three hours a day to get to school.
“When we started this initiative, I looked back and said, when I was young, I had to walk miles before I could get to school, and sometimes if I was late, I was punished,” Bernice remembers. After years of difficulties, her grandfather bought her a bicycle to get to school which she used to carry her and her siblings. “Sometimes the bike broke and we should fix it. So now we donate bikes for students to encourage them to study and so they can have enough time to be on books.”
Bernice decided to explore entrepreneurship as soon as she completed college. She and her friend Winnifred Kyei Selby wanted to create jobs rather than seek one.
As she tells WIPO Green
“I started my business at a time when a lot of idle hands were searching for jobs which were not forthcoming. I was deeply motivated by the issue of unemployment and wanted to create a business that could offer employment opportunities for the underprivileged. It continually occurred to me that without jobs, people had no future, and therefore I was determined to make a change with what I could contribute.
“At the same time, it was clear to me that solutions to some of the most challenging problems depend on creating new ideas or putting old ideas in fresh perspective. Innovation was at the forefront of my mind. I figured that in the modern world, only solutions that offer sustainable, long-term benefit to society are likely to gain a toehold. Bamboo had all the desirable elements of a sound innovation – including its sustainability feature.”
After several bike prototypes and design modifications, in 2010, she presented her idea at the Clinton Global Initiative University (an international competition for sustainable projects).
Riding a wave of global interest, she founded Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative in 2014.Located in Kumasi, the strategy focussed on using local materials and addressing unemployment, particularly among youths and women. Bamboo Bikes aims to donate 10,000 bikes to school children over five years in support of children’s education.
As Founder and CEO Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiatives, the Bright Generation Community Foundation and Envirotech Bamboo Limited, Bernice works to empower women and youth with tools to help fight poverty through sustainable agribusiness, social enterprise, education, and community partnerships.
Bamboo Bikes has not only created employment for the local community but enriched the bamboo plantation stock of Ghana by tackling deforestation and ecosystem degradation.
Bernice explains: “The reason we use bamboo to manufacture bicycles is because it’s found abundantly in Ghana and this is not a material we’re going to import.
“There were no existing bamboo bike builders in our country, so we were the first people trying to see how best we could utilise the abundant bamboo in Ghana.”
There are about seven species of bamboo in Ghana, covering some 300,000 hectares about 5% of Ghana’s forest land. Despite the abundance of bamboo in the country,
which Bernicecalls “a miracle plant”, for every bamboo plant harvested to manufacture the bikes, the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative plants 10 more.
Over the years, Bernice and Ghana Bamboo Bike Initiative have achieved an impressive list of global accolades and awards. Here’s just a few… Finalists for the 2023 Women Agripreneurs of the Year Awards (WAYA), Ambassador for the World Bamboo Organisation in Switzerland, Founding curator of the Kumasi Hub of the Global Shapers. In addition, she is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Biodiversity and Natural Capital.
