Nairobi — Kitui District is often in the news for depressing stories like starvation or death from poisonous brew. But last Tuesday, some residents had reason to smile courtesy of the Japan Bicycle Foundation.

Every year the foundation donates used bicycles to developing nations to make it easier for residents to have access to essential services like education and health care.

By March this year, it had donated 200,000 bicycles to 28 organisations in eight countries. Last Thursday's event in Kitui made Kenya the foundation's first African beneficiary.

"The Japanese government has always been concerned with the different challenges that developing countries face over meeting their (UN) Millennium Development Goals. Having worked in other countries in Asia and some parts of Latin America, we felt it was time to come to Africa and lend a hand towards these goals," Hiroshi Kurokawa, the chairman of the Japan Bicycle Foundation, told the Sunday Nation.

The bicycles are donated to the foundation by individuals in Japan. The foundation then ships them to different parts of the world where it works with local organisations.

In some countries, disadvantaged schoolchildren are the preferred beneficiaries due to the distance separating their homes from schools, hospitals or other social amenities.

In Kitui, the bicycles will also be used in environmental conservation efforts.

"It is not often that the environment and youth are mentioned in the same sentence. Many people think that the environment is not an interesting enough subject to engage the young people, so we had to look for ways to attract the youth into caring for the environment," said Isaac Kalua, founder of the Green Africa Foundation.

The Japanese and African foundations hope to cycle together towards improving the country's forest cover.

There is only one string attached to the bicycles: a student must plant two trees before receiving a bicycle; one at school and another at home. The trees are provided by the Green Africa Foundation.

Only needy students from primary and secondary schools qualify to receive the bicycles. The selection of the students is done with the help of the local community and the administrations of the different schools.

"The children not only plant tree seedlings but they unknowingly sow seeds within them that will result in their taking greater care of our environment," Mr Kalua said. He believes that the younger generation holds the key to combating the current environmental crisis.

Through a gazette notice on Friday, the minister for Regional Development Authorities, Mr Fred Gumo, apppointed Mr Kalua as a board member of the Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority.

"The youth may just succeed in what past and present generations have failed - in giving better care to our environment," said Mr Kurokawa, the Japan Bicycle Foundation chairman. Despite the fact that the bicycles are presented to individual students, they are not theirs for keeps.

After they leave for college or for secondary school, they are 'inherited' by the next batch of students. This, the Green Africa Foundation says, is intended to ensure that as many children as possible benefit from the bicycles and that more trees are planted. In this pilot project, 460 bicycles made up the first shipment, meaning that 920 tree seedlings should have been planted once all of them have been distributed.

"In conjunction with the Japanese embassy, we intend to send over a similar number of bicycles in October but to a different part of the country," Mr Kurokawa said.

The two foundations hope to extend the five-year programme to other parts of the country. The International Olympic Committee has honoured the Green Africa Foundation for its innovative ways of promoting environmental management and awareness.

Analysts estimate that Kenya's forest cover is less than two per cent of the country's surface area, something that has been blamed for the climatic changes in the country including declining rainfall and the drying up of major rivers.

In the future, the water and food crises could be a thing of the past, albeit via one bicycle at a time.