Conakry’s ‘Car Guys’ Put Themselves in the Driver’s Seat

The shop in Conakry’s seaside Coleah neighborhood is crammed bumper to bumper. A smartly detailed BMW straddles an inspection pit. Behind it, a Toyota taxi with a creaky suspension bides its time. A mud-spattered all-terrain vehicle emblazoned with a bright blue United Nations logo has arrived from a Liberian refugee camp. It noses into the lot from the street.

Next to the shop’s supply room, a huge yellow cube laced with vents and topped with a sooty exhaust pipe waits for service from a perch of cinder blocks. It is one of the thousands of diesel-powered generators across Conakry that kick in to keep electricity flowing to offices and apartment buildings when the city’s oversubscribed power grid hiccups in protest.

Business is good at the Union Garage-Coleah (UGC), a bustling auto and engine repair business owned and operated by a group of young mechanics whose high-quality work has earned them a city-wide reputation for fast, efficient service.

In fact, business is so good that the mechanics have opened a new shop for painting and body repair, and the garage has hired a new generation of apprentices, including Bamayémbé Touré, 19, who counts herself among a small handful of Guinean women with training in engine maintenance.

Just a few years ago, things were quite different. The mechanics were literally out on the street, plying their trade on a dusty sidewalk under the shade of a tall tree.

“When I first met the mechanics, they were working at a busy traffic corner near one of the main roads leading into Conakry,” says Mamadi Kourouma, who directs the Center for Development Support (CAD), ADF’s Guinea partner organization. “They obviously had talent: cars were lined up around the block. But they didn’t have the tools, training or capital they needed to do repairs cheaply and quickly.”

The mechanics couldn’t afford to keep spare parts in stock. They had to collect payment up front and purchase parts at retail. The cash-flow crunch made repairs more expensive and time-consuming.

They also lacked equipment to service cars safely and professionally. When they needed to work under a car, they would lift it up with long wooden poles and tilt it sideways, a hazardous make-do approach.

In 1994, ADF awarded UGC a grant to construct a garage, purchase equipment, improve the technical skills of its mechanics, and train staff members in business management and accounting. ADF also gave UGC a capital reserve that helped the mechanics buy a broad inventory of spare parts.

The garage purchased a diesel-powered engine setting machine, a tire-balancing machine, and tire-alignment equipment. The mechanics also received 300 hours of technical training in engine repair, hydraulics, electronics, and body repair.

Now UGC specializes in repairs to wheel hubs, shock absorbers, and suspensions, a key line of work in a country whose road networks are chronically washed out by one of the world’s rainiest climates. (Guinea’s mean annual rainfall is 1.5 meters, or nearly five feet.)

The garage’s reputation for expert work has earned it an impressive array of clients, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the American embassy.

The mechanics have kept these clients loyal with a 24-hour “go-anywhere” road maintenance service and by purchasing cell phones that keep them in constant touch with customers.

“Three of us stay at the shop every night to respond to late-night calls,” says mechanic Sory Traoré. “USAID and the US embassy have 40 generators for their offices and residences that need to be kept running. We also make trips to the Liberian frontier to collect broken down vehicles from relief workers. We tow them back to the shop.”

UGC was originally established in 1988, when the mechanics banded together to form a legally recognized cooperative. Over the years, the number of full-time mechanics has grown to nearly 20, and UGC employs about a dozen apprentices. Since 1994, the cooperative’s operating revenue has grown from a break-even level of 3.5 million Guinea Francs (about US $1,750) to 160 million Guinea Francs ($US 80,000).

With steady profit growth, UGC has generated earnings that have allowed its mechanics to get married, buy their own homes and start families.

“When we built the first garage, we worried that it was too big,” Traoré notes as he smiles across the traffic jam on the UGC lot. “Now we have a second garage and understand the need to keep growing and specializing to stay competitive. We added body repair and painting. Now we want to buy and fix used cars and sell them at a profit. With the funding and training we received through ADF, we are confident that we can keep going.”