One key area that ACF focuses on is the promotion of cycling for secondary Schools in Nigeria. We seek to encourage students to adopt cycling as a means of achieving sustainable physical and mental wellness. Pilot programs around the world have revealed that students who cycled regularly showed improved concentration and better academic performance as well as positive improvement in mood and fitness and it’s also a lot of fun.
Our goal is to help Nigerian pupils adopt regular cycling by integrating it into the school’s Inter-house sports competitions. We aim to enable our children grow up with a lifestyle of bicycling and thus enjoy long term fitness and wellness.
Children and youths under the age of 18 have received remarkably little attention in transport and mobility studies and transport policy in Africa, apart from limited work on road safety. This is an extremely important omission, given that over half the population consists of children and young people in the age group 0-18. Improving mobility and access to facilities for this group is crucial if the goals of ensuring access to Universal Primary Education, promoting gender equity and empowering women and children are to be achieved.
Our Ride to School Initiative aims to ensure that as many children as possible in Africa are able to transport themselves to school thereby making sure that the school is brought closer to them. This initiative will take us in to the hinterlands of Africa where children hitherto are used to trekking long distances just to be able to get to school. This leaves them weak and tired and most times inattentive at school. We can improve their situations by introducing basic mobility to many of them through the provision of bicycles.