BLUEPRINTS to make bikes from bamboo are being flown from Oxford to East Africa.

The Ecobikes project set up by Ethiopia Wondimu will use bamboo to make bikes for commuters in hard-to-reach parts of the country which shares her name.

The entrepreneur first saw the bikes being made by Oxford Brookes academics in a YouTube video back in 2011.

Prototypes were then built and yesterday the Oxford Brookes team officially handed over their designs for her to take back to Ethiopia.

She said: "It’s been an amazing journey trying to bring bamboo bikes to Ethiopia, especially since Ethiopia has about one million hectares of bamboo that is untapped."