Sustainable Water Supplies for Rural Communities

Written by Avni Gupta. Posted in

The Smart Handpump Journey

Many rural communities rely on handpumps for their daily water needs. Yet in Africa, 1 in 4 handpumps are broken at any one time. This can have a devastating effect on people’s lives. Long delays to repair out-of-action handpumps often force households to collect water from alternative distant or dirty water sources.

Smart Handpumps started as a research project at the University of Oxford aiming to improve the sustainability of water supplies in rural Africa. Many handpumps in the region were frequently left broken simply because the mechanics were not aware that repairs were needed. Converting existing handpumps into ‘Smart’ handpumps, using innovations based on mobile phone technology, has allowed a team of mechanics to act quickly to repair them.

A trial of Smart Handpumps across two counties in Kenya reduced the average downtime of a handpump to less than three days, a huge improvement on the 30 days that pumps had previously been out of order. The initiative has helped 70,000 people have access to reliable water sources, so they can get on with their daily routine rather than collecting water from alternative sources further away.

Read more here: https://oxreach.hubbub.net/p/Smartpumps/pitch/