Africa’s Vast Waterbenders

Water, it is often said, is life. So it follows that life is disrupted when water systems are disrupted — and across eastern and southern Africa, this has been the case during and after the recent extreme weather events. Climatic instability is, most unfortunately, here to stay; the question is now how to prepare communities and infrastructural systems to withstand the inevitable effects. Segal Family Foundation partners working in the water access sector are acutely aware of this, and some have shared with us common obstacles to their work as well as its evolution in light of the rising need for climate resilience. 

In a vibrant conversation, Murendi Mafumo of Kusini Water and Muthi Nhlema of BASEflow (both part of our latest crop of African Visionary Fellows) exchanged thoughts on the hurdles they’ve had to jump, as well as what they wish donors understood better about the communities their organizations serve. Kusini Water occupies the water and sanitation space, primarily focused on creating access to safe drinking water for people who are not on piped networks in South Africa and Lesotho. They have built a low-pressure water filter using locally-sourced material (macadamia nut shells!) to decentralize water collection, purification, and distribution. They also provide water access points to schools, and run water kiosks for revenue generation. BASEflow aims to improve the sustainability of groundwater in Malawi, and also remotely supports similar projects in Zambia and Uganda. According to Nhlema, their work is often complicated by assumptions that people have about the resource: that it’s an underground ocean of sorts, a massive abundance that will never run out, and that one can drill just anywhere and find water. These misconceptions make it difficult to work with communities, other organizations, and local governments as the task at hand is often underestimated — and further complicated by lack of oversight and accountability in the water access sector. Mafumo concurs, adding that “donors tend to design beneficiaries in their heads” then arrive with preconceived notions very different from the realities on the ground.

Interestingly, this can also happen with locally-led projects: Christelle Kwizera of Water Access Rwanda shared about realizing that she and her team had been drilling boreholes without having actually consulted the communities that would be using them. When older boreholes started to fall into disrepair yet the users proved disinterested in maintaining them, it illustrated the importance of agency and communities having a say in how they’d like to be helped. So she began to involve them by asking, “I want to give you water, how would you prefer I do this?” The most popular response was: piped water. Surprise surprise. Kwizera and her team went back to the drawing board, and that is how Water Access Rwanda took on the form that it does today. What had started as a summer project while Kwizera was a university student grew into a youth-led social enterprise that today collaborates with the government to provide rural areas of Rwanda with reliable safe piped water. Mafumo and Nhlema have much praise for Water Access Rwanda, remarking that the model works brilliantly and is well-suited to the country’s needs. Trying to replicate it out of context, they point out, would yield different results — highlighting that funders should bear in mind “Africa is not a single country and impact is not linear.”

As adverse climatic events become more frequent, IRIBA Water Group is looking into diversifying offerings to support climate solutions. IRIBA (the Kinyarwanda word for a natural water spring) started as a water sharing venture between founder Yvette Ishimwe’s family and their neighbors. Seeing that the issue was bigger than just Kayoza village, the Rwandan social enterprise now has subsidiaries the DRC and Central African Republic. In a bid to expand access options, they piloted rainwater harvesting last year — a resource also assumed to be unclean with bird excrement and other debris, yet the real issue is that it’s simply often not collected in the best manner. “When people see that rainwater can be purified and utilized, they realize that they can implement the same in their communities,” Ishimwe says. Supported by the African Development Bank and other partners, IRIBA has installed flash flood diverters at their water access points to separate first runoff from subsequent cleaner flow. Water Access Rwanda, too, is looking to expand affordability options as a means of setting communities up to be better prepared for negative weather events: similar to how BASEflow has designed more resilient boreholes and pump systems, they are also working to mitigate physical risks to infrastructure including exploring groundwater protection measures in collaboration with the Rwanda Water Board.

In all this, Mafumo cautions about the tendency to want to see a financial bottom line to everything by forcing income-generation in the name of sustainability. He maintains that not all efforts need be commercialized; that organizations can and should continue to provide services from the perspective of charity for charity’s sake. Nhlema adds that, “As much as we may want to change the world, we have to be careful not to assume the world wants to be changed. It takes humility and patience to get people to come around to your view of things.” The conversation about climate change and its relationship to the weather disruptions being experienced on the African continent must be approached with consideration. Understanding is best cemented and resilience measures best received when tangible links are drawn for communities to make sense of what is happening, in their languages — literally and figuratively.