As with many African capitals, commuting in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be a nightmare. In the growing cosmopolitan city of 10 million plus people, transport infrastructure for day-to-day mobility is not only inadequate, but often inconvenient. Alongside public buses, wait times for yellow taxis dotting the city can be lengthy with many city dwellers jostling for whatever is available particularly during rush hour. Motorcycles and tricycles whizzing by make up the rest of a limited array of mobility choices here. In this problem lies an opportunity, one on-demand ride hailing startups are now looking to fill in Kinshasa. Patricia Nzolantima wants to make sure women are part of the solution and reap the economic benefits.

Ubiz Cabs, founded by Dr. Nzolantima, is one of the earliest taxi start-ups to launch in DR Congo. The taxis are unmistakable; grey and bright pink cars zipping across town with women, dressed in similarly coloured uniforms, in the drivers’ seats.

According to Nzolantima, when the company launched in 2017, funding and familial perceptions about female taxi drivers proved to be challenging while building the business. “The first year was very difficult,” Nzolantima tells AMAKA on a call from Kinshasa. “I could wake up in the morning and get a call from a driver saying, ‘My husband said I should stop driving [because] I’m a married woman [and] how can I drive the men.’” 

The single story about Congolese women is one of victimhood. As a result of political instability, a contention for the country’s rich mineral reserves and the activities of more than a hundred armed militia groups, there seems to be no respite from violence and conflict for the central African country. More than 5 million people are internally displaced and nearly a million are seeking asylum in at least 20 countries around the world. DR Congo has been referred to as the worst place to exist as a woman in the world due to widespread gender-based and sexual violence perpetuated as weapons of war. In 2011, a report published in the American Journal of Public Health said it found that 48 women were raped per hour in the country both in domestic settings as well as a direct result of political conflict. 

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​​Perceptions of women drivers in Congo

Although Ubiz Cabs currently operates in Kinshasa, which is somewhat removed from the violence happening majorly in eastern DR Congo, Nzolantima says putting women behind the wheels is an affirmation that Congolese women have agency and multiplicity of stories, not only beyond what the media and political landscapes dictate, but also from familial expectations of them in Congolese society. “[For] most women in Congo, their families do not give them the tools and skills to think differently,” she says. “This is one of the issues we have in French-speaking [African] countries. The perception in English-speaking countries is different.”

She recalls: “I remember when this lady came in the morning she was crying, saying, I need to stop, I cannot put my marriage in trouble because of this company. I said, ‘But your husband doesn’t work and you are earning $300 per month, how can you stop?’”

Education was also a challenge. To address this, Nzolantima launched a drivers’ academy choosing to recruit university students looking to augment their stipends from home. “Some of the students knew how to drive but they did not have cars to drive because they come from low-income families.” Another challenge which presented itself in those early years came from the numerous non-governmental organisations in DR Congo on peacekeeping missions. She remembers how her drivers were often lured with higher pays to meet their gender parity quotas. 

Now, more young women are taking to the job. They love the smart uniforms and the shiny new cars and the upward social mobility the pay affords them. “One lady married one of our clients and lives in Paris now,” Nzolantima adds. The training academy not only teaches driving and technical lessons but also incorporates leadership, mentorship and financial literacy programs with the end goal of helping the drivers create wealth. 

More than 100 women aged 27 to 50, work for the mobility segment of Ubiz Cabs. About 50 more are being trained to operate tricycles which comprises Ubiz Cabs’ delivery segment. A boat service is also in the works. “I’m relocating to Cape Town and I want to buy some second-hand boats and start Ubiz Boats which will run on the Congo River between Brazzaville and Kinshasa,” Nzolantima says.

Ride-hailing in Kinshasa

Ubiz Cabs operates as most on-demand ride-hailing services do. Fares are charged per distance and time spent, and can cost anywhere between $10 and $40 per trip. Nzolantima says the service is targeted at DR Congo’s middle class but room is being made, via more service offerings like tricycles — which are imported from China and assembled by women technicians in Kinshasa — to accommodate more income brackets. There are also plans to move past Kinshasa to serve other cities in DR Congo.

Unlike platforms like Uber, Ubiz Cabs does not allow privately owned cars onto the platform at the moment. Nzolantima says most of the cabs in Kinshasa are not properly maintained hence will not fit into the quality standards the business already delivers to customers. To this end, plans are underway to launch a digital bank which will provide drivers with access to microfinance so they can own the cars. “The goal is to give them microloans so that they can own the vehicles and we will be just like Uber, managing the platform,” Nzolantima says. 

Since 2017, the grey and pink uniformed drivers and their cars have warmed their way into the hearts of city dwellers including informal taxi operators as well as security outfits like the police. And thankfully, the company is yet to receive any complaints of harassment from riders towards the drivers.

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Announcing female-owned businesses to the world

Fifteen years before returning to Kinshasa, Nzolantima, a graduate of prestigious institutions including Stanford and Harvard, started her entrepreneurial journey with a marketing and communications agency which worked with clients like Coca Cola, Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Ubiz Cabs came in 2017, and in 2018, she launched Working Ladies Hub to incubate female-owned businesses in DR Congo. All these including an FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) company and the aforementioned micro credit product are all housed under Bizzoly Holdings Limited which Nzolantima is in talks with an Asian company to sell. 

Nzolantima is very keen on announcing African female talent and businesses to the world. According to her, access to a quality network was something she struggled with when she first set out on her entrepreneurial journey. With the marketing agency — including a branch now being set up in Spain — she is dedicated to making that journey less tasking for Congolese women business owners to give them tools that they need to help them break the glass ceiling and dream big. “I do not define myself as a feminist,” she insists. “I’m a woman who wants women to realise that they can achieve anything they want.” 

What she’s also seen, she says, is that women’s interactions with each other can be toxic and most successful business women have more male partners, investors and colleagues rather than fellow women. Her interest in women development is also to change these perceptions. 

Born into an entrepreneurial family, Nzolantima says she has her family to thank for not fitting her into the stereotyped boxes women often are put into in DR Congo. Without the expectations of marriage and homemaking, there was time to study, travel the world and develop a mindset that differed from what is prevalent in DR Congo. 

The gruelling realities of entrepreneurship 

Nzolantima minces no words in saying she is now more cautious about advising women to enter into entrepreneurship. “Yes, people say I’m a success story, but my life is not an easy life,” she says. There are no off days. No sick leaves. Failed relationships. Emotional, physical and mental lethargy. A relentlessly gruesome business environment — exorbitant taxes for new companies, no credit facilities particularly for women, investors focused on everywhere else but central Africa — to deal with although entrepreneurs often also have the interests of their countries at heart,” she says. Nzolantima adds that “When scale and expansion are part of the equation, the process is “so painful and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” “You can become unstable,” she adds passionately, “and if you do not have a partner beside you, you will give up!”

Entrepreneurship has become a glamorous appendage on social media, something nice to add to your bio but Nzolantima says it is anything but how breezy it appears on social media. With “so much betrayals and disappointment” Nzolantima says there is no stopping now. There’s a lot at stake. However, mental health support for women entrepreneurs is something that will feature prominently when her communications business starts operations in Spain. 

More on-demand mobility services have launched since 2017. Others like CanGo (formerly SafeMotos) have exited the market unable to beat the hostility of the Congolese business environment which Nzolantima is hoping technology and digitisation can impact. But this is dependent on unavailable internet infrastructure to drive technology development and adoption. 

With talks to buy the parent company underway, Nzolantima is careful to shake hands with partners who will help push the company forward and grow it into an entity that withstands the tests of time. “It’s not really about making money, it’s a really sustainable vision.”