2023-07-14 19:21:00
The non-governmental organization “Innovation: Africa” has now helped more than 900 villages to get electricity and clean water. “What we do is very simple,” says the founder and managing director Sivan Yaari (45) to the eXXpress: “We use solar energy to pump water.”
“Innovation: Africa” now has 142 employees in ten countries, including 79 engineers. “It’s the best job,” says Ben Fuxbrunner (28) to eXXpress. The engineer started working for “Innovation: Africa” while he was still studying electromechanics. “You immediately feel the effects of your own work.”
Drinking water from the water pipe is a matter of course for Austrians, but still not for countless people around the world. In Africa, more than 400 million people do not have access to clean water. Every day they start looking for water in the morning hours or have to stand in line for hours in front of one or two wells. They usually have no choice but to be satisfied with unclean water, knowing that they will get sick from it. In total, more people die from polluted water than from all forms of violence, including war, according to the United Nations.
A functioning water pump system is often missing, but this would require electricity – and this is the crux of the problem. “Energy is the key to fighting poverty,” says Yaari. “620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. Only 34 percent of medical centers and fewer than 25 percent of schools in Africa have access to electricity.”
This is exactly where “Innovation: Africa” comes in, for example in Tanzania, Uganda or Malawi. The Israeli organization brings solar, water and agricultural technologies to rural African villages. For example, the 4,000 residents of Mdlabongolo, a village in the Ehlanzeni district of South Africa, have been dependent on contaminated water sources for years. In September 2019, Innovation: Africa installed a solar powered water pump system. A ten meter high tower was built, which is connected by kilometers of piping to another 10,000 liter reservoir, which stores additional water that is distributed to the village’s taps. All of this is connected to a well located 55 meters deep. Since then, all villagers have been able to drink clean and safe water every day.
The village of Ndebwe, 51 kilometers from Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, is home to 4,600 people whose only source of water was previously the local natural wells. During the rainy season, women and children had to queue for up to two hours to fill their canisters with water. The unclean water constantly caused stomach diseases. In the dry season, the wells dried up and the residents had to search for new water.
In April 2019, “Innovation: Africa” also installed its solar water pump system together with the NGO “Water 4 Mercy”. To meet the needs of the population, 38 taps were built throughout the village. Since then, brick houses have been built, gardens laid out, children go to school and women no longer have to go looking for water. The health and hygiene of 4,600 people have improved since access to clean water.
Thanks to such projects, schools and clinics are now also supplied with electricity.
The idea for Innovation: Africa came to Sivan Yaari when she was in her early 20s and was working at a factory in Madagascar. There she got to know the harsh reality of life in the villages. “The poverty I saw there was very different from what I experienced in Israel,” she is quoted as saying in the Israeli daily Maariv. “Only then did I understand what real poverty is. In the villages I saw mothers and children without shoes looking for water and ended up drinking dirty water from which they got sick. The clinics lacked doctors, refrigerators, medicines and electricity. It was then that I realized that this cycle can only be broken if we provide people with solar technologies.”
Sivan Yaari thought, “We might bring in the same technologies that we used here in Israel to grow food and pump water during the statehood years.” Yaari, who already had a bachelor’s degree in finance, completed a sophomore and earned a Masters in Energy Management from Columbia University. In 2008 she started the first project in a small village in Tanzania. Between 200 and 300 villages are now supplied with electricity and water every year.
Yaari reports: “Before we arrive in a village, we meet with the chief and the community. They accompany us through the entire process from start to finish, even before we drill for groundwater with the drilling machine.” The employees later select ten villagers “to work with us. We will teach them everything there is to learn regarding the solar water pumping system. So while we are working, we have at least ten people in the village itself who know how to operate the system, how to fix it and who make sure that people continue to have water supply.”
The help comes in several steps. First, the engineers drill a well that can go up to 250 meters deep into the ground to reach the aquifer. A water tower up to ten meters high will then be erected, on which solar panels will then be erected in order to capture the solar energy to operate a pump. “We then lift a 10,000 liter water tank to the top of the tower to collect the pumped groundwater,” reports Sivan Yaari.
Trenches are then dug in a four-kilometer radius around the village. “We are laying pipes to bring the water to the taps. Community members will be involved in the construction work along with our contractors.” Between 10 and 15 water stations will be set up throughout the village.
An in-house remote monitoring technology will be installed prior to completion. This is particularly important for sustainability. It allows the NGO to track electricity and water consumption in real time. In the event of malfunctions, there are warning messages. If problems arise with a project following a few years, the team at “Innovation: Africa” will know immediately.
At the end, the community members turn on the taps and the village receives clean, safe drinking water for the first time.
The NGO receives money from a foundation, and private individuals, families and organizations finance the individual projects with their donations. The biggest difficulty is deciding which village to help first, reports Sivan Yaari. Hundreds of millions of people still live without electricity and suffer from a lack of clean water. “We’re working with local governments and going into areas where we know the government isn’t going to get there anytime soon so we can help those who aren’t.”
Residents in some remote areas know Israel from the Bible. “For them it is as if God had come and answered their prayers. Suddenly they have clean water and light.” Israel is also admired by the local governments. “For them, Israel is a model of success that they aspire to.” In just 75 years, Israel has become a country that “wants to share infrastructure, technology and knowledge” with other countries.
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