Researchers from Oxford University have announced they have started working on an innovative mobile project set to change lives of thousands of families living in East Africa’s drought-stricken areas.
The project funded by the UK Department of International Development will see the University researchers install SMS transmitters in 70 village using hand pumps across the Kyuso district, one of the regions in Kenya experiencing chronic drought.
The Oxford University researchers will from August pilot new, low-cost data transmitters that will automatically send a text message to the district and national water managers in the region in case of a fault, and whenever the fault is fixed.
Oxford researcher Patrick Thomson said: ”The transmitter is no bigger than a mobile phone and fits inside the hand pump. It automatically registers the movement of the handle of the pump and from this calculates the amount of water extracted from the pump”.
The application sends automatic SMS’s to water supply managers on the water usage at each pump is sent at regular intervals.
The managers can afterwards track down the pumps with reduced output as well as those that have stopped before sending their engineers to fix them.
The Oxford Researchers believe that as mobile technology booms in Africa, it is high time it was used to curb their immediate problems.
The researchers added that reliable water supplies lead to healthier people and more productive livelihoods. Lack of reliable access to clean water is however an enduring problem in rural Africa.
Many African villages have no access to piped water and therefore rely on hand water pumps.
According to the WHO, Africa has the lowest total water supply coverage of any region, with only 62 percent of the population having access to improved water supply. This figure is based on estimates from countries that represent approximately 96 percent of Africa’s total population.
The situation is much worse in rural areas, where coverage is only 47 percent, compared to 85 percent coverage in urban areas. Sanitation coverage in Africa also is poor, with only Asia having lower coverage levels. Currently, only 60 percent of the total population in Africa has sanitation coverage, with coverage varying from 84 percent in urban areas to 45 percent in rural areas.
“Reliable water supplies lead to healthier people and more productive livelihoods. We hope that by applying mobile communications technologies within the rural water sector, we can improve water security and reduce poverty for the 276 million people in rural Africa who currently don’t have safe and reliable water supplies,” Lead researcher Dr Rob Hope, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford’s School for Geography and the Environment, said.
The Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell MP, whose department is funding the pilot project in Kenya, said water does not just save lives in the short term; it is a cornerstone for delivering economic growth and helping countries to work their way out of poverty.
