@tomcourtright.bsky.social

An (incomplete) map of what motorcycle-taxis are called across the continent. You've all heard of boda bodas and moto-taxis, but did you know about bendskins and Jakartas? 🇸🇳 🏍 🇨🇲 🏍 🇺🇬 🏍 🇲🇿

Hi @airasia it's very difficult to find out if our first flight on a return ticket is missed (due to a Batik Air delay) we still have the return ticket? Your customer care bot is not helping

One of the stranger boda boda origin stories: the Vietnam-American war. According to Vietnamese journalists, in the 1960s, motorcycle-owning Vietnamese office workers gave rides to American soldiers to take them around the city, leading to the invention of xe om - boda bodas.

don’t make me tap the sign

@Winnie_Byanyima If you're interested to learn more, check out the Uganda E-Mobility Association's sector paper on it! uema.ug/publications/

This is not an “achievement.” It’s laughable spin. Kenya normalized hybrid mobility years ago, with charging infrastructure across malls, office blocks, and fuel stations. That didn’t happen by accident, it came from policy, planning, and intent. Rwanda didn’t just talk, it incentivized. Years of tax breaks on hybrid and electric imports transformed the market. The shift is visible, measurable, and sustained. Ethiopia has gone even further by restricting the import of fuel-only vehicles and forcing a transition toward hybrids and electrification. That’s what decisive climate action looks like. And Uganda? Still stuck - minimal infrastructure, weak incentives, no credible transition plan. So let’s be honest, what exactly is being celebrated here? You don’t get applause for arriving late, doing little, and rebranding it as progress. Climate leadership is not a press release. It’s results. Makerere Launches First Electric Car Fast-Charging Station kmaupdates.com/2026/03/16/mak…

Winnie Byanyima posting about e-mobility policy was not on my bingo card. Love to see it!

Good piece by Nicolas Kristof in the NYT today

The Atlantic has a sobering, first-person look at the ramifications of legalized online sports betting. Here are a few of the more telling passages. 1/5

@united ? I've sent a message. Still no replies anywhere

@Tom_Courtright Hi, there. We’re truly sorry to hear about what you’re experiencing, and we understand how frustrating this must be. Please send us a direct message with your confirmation number, full name, and email address, so we can look into this further for you. twitter.com/messages/compo…

having a terrible experience with @united airlines. missed a connection to get to bangkok, stuck in LA, they've put me on a flight that's 36 hours from now, no hotel they have removed all human customer service from the airport. there is just a QR code to a website without ppl

Next month I'll be running a workshop at the University of Vienna on jobs for historians outside universities, drawing on my own experiences. The course is almost fully booked but I would be happy to run this same workshop at other universities.

With boda bodas increasingly available in Mozambique and in Dakar itself, it's looking more and more like a boda rainbow 🏍️🌈

Daniel Kalinaki Set to Retire from Nation Media Group in April Daniel Kalinaki, the General Manager - Editorial at @NationMediaGrp Uganda and one of the country’s most prominent newsroom leaders, is set to retire on April 1, 2026, ending a two-decade career that included leading @DailyMonitor and @The_EastAfrican operations, an internal email seen by this publication shows. Read the full story: ceo.co.ug/daniel-kalinak…

Something pretty cool is happening at Harvard right now. Last fall, we launched our fellowship there: offering 12 juniors $15k each to spend their summer at high-impact orgs, instead of joining the 'Bermuda Triangle of Talent' (consulting, finance, and corporate law).

Needless to say, I don't expect this to go any further than previous attempts.

What will happen do the roughly 250,000 boda riders in Kampala told their job is no longer viable? 250,000 unemployed young men in the capital city? No plan.

The Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) is embarking on yet another attempt to drastically reduce the number of boda bodas in Kampala - by around 90% (to 27,870). 🫨 A thread.

@RaymondJak @MwangoCapital Vibes based a bit but not wildly off. There are no motorcycle deregistrations and very low boda (commercial / PSV) registrations so all numbers are just estimates. I'd personally estimate 20% lower than all of these numbers

@MwangoCapital @Tom_Courtright how true is this

Boda boda numbers across East Africa: — Kenya: ~2.5 million — Uganda: 1.8–2 million — Tanzania: ~1.6 million [The East African]