Transforming Commercial Transportation… Female Kekeh Drivers Earn National Respect
The streets of Freetown.
A growing number of women are becoming commercial kekeh drivers, taking jobs long seen as exclusively male and quietly reshaping daily life in the capital.
For years, the three-wheeled kekeh has been the backbone of transport in Freetown’s crowded neighborhoods. But for women like Hawa Mansaray, driving is not just transport work; it is survival. She entered the trade after struggling through several low-paid jobs, and now uses her income to support her child and extended family. Her story reflects a larger shift: women entering informal sectors traditionally closed to them because the economic pressure is leaving few alternatives.
The significance is cultural as much as economic. Sierra Leonean society still places strong expectations on what work women should do, especially in urban public spaces. Driving commercially exposes these women to harassment, ridicule, and safety risks. Yet many continue because the work offers something rare: direct income, control over their schedules, and financial independence in a country where formal jobs remain scarce.
Passengers are beginning to notice. Some commuters interviewed said they actively prefer female drivers, because they perceive them as more careful and respectful. That small preference has become meaningful. In a city where transport is often chaotic, these women are building reputations not only as drivers but as symbols of discipline and reliability.
Their presence also reveals a deeper story about postwar urban change. Freetown’s infrastructure has not kept pace with rapid population growth, and transport demand has surged. Kekehs filled a gap in public transport, and now women are filling a gap in economic opportunity. Their story is therefore not simply about gender; it is about how ordinary Sierra Leoneans adapt when formal systems fail to provide stable work.
The image of a woman steering a yellow-green kekeh through Congo Cross or Kissy Road may seem ordinary, but in Sierra Leone today it represents something larger: a quiet form of social change driven not by policy, but by necessity and courage. For many families, these women are proving that the future may arrive not through grand state programs, but through small acts of persistence in everyday life.
