TEAM Rwanda. Bright yellow, green and blue jackets stood out in the departure lounge of Kigali’s international airport. Rwanda’s young national cycling team was on the move once more, returning from 12th place in their first African Games, held in Algiers, and now flying on to continental championships for mountain-biking in Namibia.

The friend I was travelling with, a former Olympic cyclist, spotted a familiar face in the group.

Jonathan “Jock” Boyer is a former Tour de France competitor, the first American to compete in the French classic, with a best finish in his five attempts of 12th in 1983. Based in the southern Rwandan university town of Butare, Boyer spends more than half his year in Rwanda, managing, organising and riding with the team.

With an annual budget of just $150,000 obtained mostly from private individuals, Boyer has high hopes for the team’s future. He reckons that in just two years the Rwandans will be good enough to tackle the international circuit. “The future of new cycling talent is likely to come from Africa, which has until now been relatively unexploited.”

The team was formed in January this year, with five cyclists being selected from an initial group of 20.
At the time, there were only about 60 serious cyclists in the country, most with ancient equipment, many without shoes and none with the right training methods. While cycling is a way of life in the land of a thousand hills, two-wheelers are not used for recreation but rather to shift water and people. Long lines of yellow plastic water jug-adorned cycles are part of the Rwandan scenery, and an indication of the development challenge.

This has not been an easy ride. Since most of the team came from acutely poor backgrounds without running water or electricity in their homes, part of the focus of the past year has been building up strength and reserves through a proper diet.

But this is more than just another cycling team. Boyer explains how the project is linked to the construction of a bicycle to carry coffee beans. Designed by mountain-bike icon Tom Ritchey and employing cutting edge, high-strength materials, these “Project Rwanda” cargo-bikes have lopped two transport hours off each day for rural coffee producers. Plans are afoot to link the team’s activities to jatropha biofuel plantations, aiming to attract the sort of investment in this area to reduce Rwanda’s annual $300m fuel importation bill. Ritchey invited Boyer, who was running a bike shop in California, in September last year for Rwanda’s annual wooden bike race, and the rest is making history.

With a drug-scarred Tour de France, this is the sort of fillip and focus professional cycling needs. It is also a tremendous advertisement for Rwanda, a country still known by many not for its natural beauty but for the terrible genocide 13 years ago.

Team Rwanda is part of the fruits of hard work and development progress, and of the sort of inspiration foreigners can give without reinforcing a dependency mindset. Its success has nothing to do with international consultants conducting expensive research tours and writing tedious papers, but about good people putting their talents to practical effect. It is a most personal form of globalisation, and a very effective one. It is how cycling can change its image from doing drugs to doing good.

Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, dedicated to strengthening African economic performance.