 and result in uninterrupted handpump services.
Lastly, it was by surprise that the researchers discovered they could model the data to estimate the depth of the groundwater below the pump.
Successful implementation of Smart Handpumps in in two counties in Kenya (Kwale and Kitui) has led to the creation of a professional maintenance company Fundifix Ltd (‘Fundi’ means ‘mechanic’ in Swahili). The company receives data from over 300 community handpumps serving over 50,000 rural Kenyans and has reduced the downtime of broken pumps from over 30 days to less than 3 days.
Connecting multiple waterpoints into one network for maintenance improves services and reduces cost.
Handpumps typically don’t break down often, but when they do repairs can be expensive. To prevent water users being hit with a large bill, the Fundifix model requires them to pre-pay monthly with mobile money. In return they are guaranteed a high quality service.
But user payments alone will never be enough to cover full operation and maintenance costs, especially in poor rural areas.
A Water Services Maintenance Trust Fund has been set up to pool additional finance from government and investors. Crucially, the Trust Fund only releases finance to the maintenance company if agreed performance indicators are met, such as rapid repair, collection of user payments, water quality monitoring and sound financial management.
Mobile communications allow information about handpump functionality and payments to be monitored easily and cheaply.
This performance-based approach has been successfully trialled in parts of Kwale and Kitui counties, and the next step is scaling up county-wide, and expanding beyond handpumps to include all types of rural water infrastructure, including piped systems.
While the research to date has focused on Afridev pumps in Africa, the pump outside the School of Geography and the Environment is a Samrat from Bangladesh. Researchers are analysing data from this different type of pump, to ensure their models are robust enough to work across different types of handpumps.
As part of our research on universal drinking water security in Bangladesh, we plan to install transmitters on handpumps in the rural area of Matlab Bazaar in order to understand water use and support the government’s coordination, investment and delivery of water services.
From Kenya to Bangladesh and beyond, by equipping government, communities and investors with better information and monitoring systems, they can work together to keep water flowing in communities, schools and clinics.
© 2019 REACH