One journal entry, one plane ticket and one unexpected fork in the road led Kimberly Coats to nearly two decades of building opportunities for cyclists across Africa.
She wrote three things in her journal. A few months later, she was on a plane to Rwanda.
In June 2008, Kimberly Coats was 42 years old and feeling restless. She had a good career, but something inside her was telling her that the life she was living was no longer enough. So she opened her journal and wrote down three things she wanted: to travel, to do something connected to her love of cycling, and to help people.
A few months later, an article in Outside magazine by Jason Gay introduced her to Project Rwanda and its efforts to develop a national cycling team. Kimberly read it and immediately recognized something she had been searching for without knowing exactly what it was. She called it her fork in the road.
She quit her business development job at Sysco Foods, where she had been selling food to restaurants and casinos, and booked a flight to Rwanda. She expected to stay for three months. She stayed for eight years.
A 3-month adventure becomes a new life
Kimberly arrived in Rwanda in April 2009 with no idea that the decision would reshape the rest of her life. What began as a short volunteer adventure became a commitment to helping build a cycling culture from the ground up.
At the time, the work was closely connected to Project Rwanda and the development of Team Rwanda Cycling. Africa Rising Cycling eventually became its own nonprofit in 2010, and the mission grew far beyond one team or one country.
Kimberly found herself returning to the United States for just three or four weeks each year, gathering bikes, equipment and supplies before heading back to Rwanda. Shipping equipment into the country was difficult, so she often packed everything she could into her luggage and carried it with her.
The work was demanding, but the direction felt clear. Her philosophy was simple: just be open.
She often references Shonda Rhimes’ book Year of Yes and the idea that sometimes the opportunities that change your life begin with a willingness to say yes before you know exactly where that yes will lead.
Sometimes the biggest turns happen when you stop planning
Kimberly was not an elite cyclist when she started. She had been a runner in high school and college, but injuries eventually pushed her toward cycling in her early 30s while living in Kansas City.
She describes herself as recreationally competitive, the kind of rider who loved getting out on the bike and pushing herself but never imagined that cycling would become the center of her professional life.
Then Rwanda happened.
Her marriage ended while she was living there, and eventually she met the man who would become her husband, a former Tour de France rider who was running the team. Today, the two live on a family ranch in Wyoming that dates back to 1905, where Kimberly says the cycling is incredible.
The geography changed. The mission did not.
From one team to an entire cycling ecosystem
The deeper Kimberly went into the work, the more she realized that building successful cyclists required building everything around them.
A rider cannot develop without mechanics who know how to keep bikes running. Teams need coaches, administrators, race opportunities, equipment, nutrition, support staff and people who understand how to create sustainable programs. Coaches need training, and local leaders need the skills to eventually run programs themselves.
That became one of the defining ideas behind Africa Rising Cycling.
The goal was never simply to bring bikes to Africa or identify a handful of talented riders and send them overseas. It was to create the infrastructure and knowledge that would allow cycling communities to develop from within. Kimberly talks about agency often.
She wants people to have the ability to run their own programs, build their own teams, fix their own bikes, organize their own races and create their own opportunities without always depending on someone arriving from another country to make it happen.
That is a much bigger vision than racing. It is an ecosystem.
And then came the women
As Africa Rising Cycling expanded, Kimberly saw another reality becoming impossible to ignore.
Women and girls were facing many of the same challenges as men, but with another layer of barriers on top of them. Bikes were harder to access. Race opportunities were fewer. Funding was limited. Equipment was often shared or unavailable. And cultural expectations around marriage and motherhood could make the idea of pursuing cycling professionally feel almost impossible.
Kimberly has frequently found herself as the only woman sitting at the table with cycling federations.
She has learned that increasing women’s participation requires more than simply telling women they are welcome. They need bikes. They need races. They need coaches. They need mechanics. They need role models. Most importantly, they need to see a future for themselves in the sport.
Africa Rising Cycling has worked with roughly 40 to 50 women over the years in roles including riders, coaches and mechanics, alongside hundreds of people involved in cycling more broadly.
The numbers are still growing.
What if becoming a mother doesn’t mean giving up the bike?
One conversation has stayed with Kimberly.
A successful 24-year-old rider told her she planned to race for one more year. Then she intended to get married, have children and stop cycling.
To the rider, those things were mutually exclusive.
Kimberly showed her another possibility: Kristin Armstrong, the American Olympic gold medalist who was married and a mother while competing at the highest levels of the sport.
The point was not that every woman should become an elite cyclist.
It was that women should be able to imagine more than one version of their future.
That distinction is at the heart of Kimberly’s work.
The answer isn’t to fight culture. It’s to expand possibility.
Africa is not one place with one culture.
It is 54 countries, each with its own history, traditions, communities and expectations. Kimberly does not believe the answer is to arrive from the outside and tell people how their culture should change.
Instead, she believes in coming alongside communities, respecting the culture and showing what else is possible. Sometimes change begins with something very small. A woman gets her own bike. A girl enters her first race. A mechanic learns that she can build and repair a bike herself.
A mother realizes she does not have to disappear from the sport simply because she has children.
And sometimes a young woman simply decides to keep riding.
One woman kept riding
Kimberly tells the story of a woman in Eritrea whose family believed that racing a bicycle could affect her virginity. The pressure was enormous.
When Kimberly asked how she dealt with it, the woman’s answer was remarkably simple. She just kept riding.
There is something powerful in that simplicity. No speech. No grand declaration. Just a decision to continue.
For Kimberly, that is what progress can look like.
Sometimes a bicycle is much more than a bicycle
In Benin, Africa Rising Cycling has supported women’s mechanic training. Kimberly remembers one young woman explaining why the experience mattered so much to her.
She was happy that she could fix her own bicycle because she no longer had to depend on men to do it for her and deal with the harassment that sometimes came with that dependence. Kimberly calls that agency.
She calls it power.
And it is one of the clearest examples of why her vision has always extended beyond racing. A bicycle can be transportation, a livelihood, a tool for education, a path into competition or a doorway into an entirely different future.
The bike is often just the beginning.
The race isn’t always the destination
Africa Rising Cycling now works primarily in West Africa, including Benin, Sierra Leone and Togo, while continuing to support individuals and programs elsewhere.
The organization has helped put hundreds of people into the cycling ecosystem, not only as athletes but as mechanics, coaches, administrators and other professionals. In Eritrea, the organization helped put 700 bikes into a container in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, along with mechanic training and regional distribution. Some of those bikes were intended to help children get to school.
The work also includes helping young athletes travel to world championships, navigate visas and access opportunities with professional teams.
The objective is not to create a single success story. It is to create the conditions for many more.
But first, keep the kids in school
For Kimberly, cycling development cannot come at the expense of education.
She has watched young athletes leave school because they believed cycling was their ticket to a better life. Her message is straightforward: if a young athlete becomes a professional, that’s wonderful. But you stay in school.
She points to Adrien Niyonshuti, one of Africa Rising Cycling’s most successful riders and the only Rwandan rider Kimberly says has raced at the World Tour level, as an example of how cycling and education can exist together.
And she is equally passionate about recognizing paths that do not lead to professional racing.
A young person who is not going to become an elite cyclist may become a mechanic, coach, shop owner, administrator or another kind of cycling professional.
There are many ways to build a life around the bike.
Meet Jonathan
One of the most compelling examples of long-term development is a young rider named Jonathan.
One of the original Team Rwanda members eventually moved in with Kimberly in Rwanda and brought his three-year-old son, Jonathan, with him. Jonathan grew up surrounded by cycling camps, riders and bikes and has been riding since he was three.
Kimberly believes he has developed extraordinary bike handling and technical skills.
Now nearly 18, Jonathan is competing at the World Championships, with Kimberly saying he arrived in Canada on September 22. He attends an American school in Rwanda and is continuing his education while pursuing cycling.
Kimberly is determined that he finish secondary school before joining a professional team, should an opportunity arise.
She was also preparing to visit Fort Lewis College, Durango and Mesa University in Colorado to explore college cycling opportunities for him.
For Kimberly, Jonathan represents something bigger than one talented rider.
He represents what can happen when a child grows up with access to the bike from the beginning.
The Good Dirt Ride is where all of this comes together
Every October, thousands of miles away from the cycling camps and roads of Africa, another piece of the mission comes together in Southern California.
The Good Dirt Ride takes place Saturday, October 24, 2026, in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. It is now in its 19th year and serves as Africa Rising Cycling’s primary fundraising event.
The story began with Doug Grant, who had traveled to Rwanda and saw the cargo bike project firsthand. For his 50th birthday, he decided to organize a ride with friends and use it to raise money for the work he had witnessed.
The first year raised roughly $6,000. At its peak before COVID, the event drew nearly 1,200 riders.
Doug eventually handed the event over, and it has continued as one of the most important pieces of Africa Rising Cycling’s fundraising model.
It’s a ride. Not a race.
Kimberly is quick to make the distinction.
The Good Dirt Ride is a ride, not a race.
There are 10, 15, 25 and 50-mile options, creating space for experienced cyclists, families, friends and people simply looking for a great day on a bike. There is a large raffle, including bikes valued at around $10,000, along with a beer garden, community atmosphere and plenty of fellowship.
Over 19 years, the event has raised approximately $1.7 million for Africa Rising Cycling, with a long-term goal of reaching $2 million around its 20th anniversary. That is an extraordinary number.
But Kimberly sees every dollar as a tool for building something much larger.
Every mile has somewhere to go
Good Dirt Ride proceeds help support Africa Rising Cycling’s programs across Africa, including athlete development, equipment, mechanic and coaching programs, travel to international competition and the infrastructure required to make cycling sustainable.
A portion of the event’s proceeds also goes to the Orange County Mountain Bike Association, helping support local trails, maintenance and access.
That connection matters. The ride is rooted in Southern California, but its impact travels far beyond it.
One cycling community gets together for a day on the bike, and that energy helps create opportunities for another cycling community thousands of miles away.
Build it, and they will come
Kimberly’s vision for the future begins much earlier than elite racing.
She wants children to encounter bikes when they are four or five years old. She wants girls to have access to balance bikes, pump tracks and safe places to ride. She wants cycling integrated into schools and daycares so that getting on a bike becomes a normal part of childhood rather than something a young person has to discover later.
The earlier children develop those skills, the more natural cycling becomes. And the earlier girls see other women riding, racing, coaching and fixing bikes, the easier it becomes for them to imagine themselves doing the same. That is how a cycling culture grows. Not overnight. One rider at a time.
The slow burn
There are signs that the landscape is changing.
Benin has held a women’s UCI points race with roughly 22 women. Burundi has held a women’s stage race and criterium with around 45 women and moved toward UCI status. A women’s club team in South Africa is pursuing continental status, and Ethiopia has a women’s continental team. The development is real, but Kimberly knows it takes time.
The pipeline is still much smaller than it needs to be, particularly at the junior level. Women often begin riding in their teens or twenties, which means they enter the sport with fewer years of experience and less opportunity to develop the technical skills that riders need at the highest levels.
Kimberly believes more investment and more skilled people are needed to change that. The future depends on starting earlier.
The woman behind the movement still loves to ride
After nearly two decades of working in cycling, Kimberly is still a cyclist herself.
Her life now looks very different from those early years in Rwanda. She lives on a Wyoming ranch with her husband, surrounded by wide-open roads and what she describes as amazing riding.
But the underlying reason she rides has never really changed. The bike still connects people. It still opens doors.
And it still has the ability to take someone somewhere they never expected to go.
What happens when you keep saying yes?
Kimberly’s story began with three sentences in a journal.
Travel. Cycling. Help people.
She did not know exactly how those three things would fit together. She did not know that a three-month trip would become eight years in Rwanda, that a project focused on one national team would evolve into a nonprofit working across multiple countries, or that her work would eventually touch athletes, mechanics, coaches, women, children and entire cycling communities.
She simply said yes.
Then she kept saying yes.
Yes to Rwanda. Yes to women who wanted another path. Yes to mechanics who wanted independence.
Yes to young riders who needed opportunity. Yes to education. Yes to the idea that a bicycle could be much more than a bicycle.
And yes to a future where more people across Africa can see themselves as cyclists.
Kimberly didn’t know where that plane to Rwanda would take her.
She simply said yes. And then she kept riding.
Join the Good Dirt Ride!
