Research – Page 2 – Rural Water Supply Network

Handpump standardisation in sub-Saharan Africa: Seeking a champion

by Jess MacArthur, IDE Bangladesh

Download now — Download the new RWSN Publication “Handpump standardisation in sub-Saharan African”

As a millennial, I have to admit: I really enjoy technology and innovation. I love to read innovation blogs and to dissect innovation theory. So just over two years ago as I began researching how innovation intersects development in the world of handpumps, I felt a bit stumped. An estimated 184 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) today rely on handpumps for their domestic water and many of these use designs that were developed before I was born. Yes, that makes me young and maybe that make you feel old. But mostly, it made me sit back and think. Is this beneficial or is this concerning? At the time I was helping Water4 navigate the policy-sphere around new handpump integration. I wanted to know why certain handpumps have more dominance in certain areas and how innovators can pilot in the sector with both evolutionary and revolutionary designs.

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Out today: Addressing arsenic and fluoride in drinking water – Geogenic Contamination Handbook

by Dr Annette Johnson and Anja Bretzler, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) – www.wrq.eawag.ch

Researchers at Eawag have been involved in finding technological solutions for arsenic-contaminated drinking water over the last decades. When we also started looking at fluoride contamination in drinking water we soon came to realise how enormous the problem was and how that challenges to long-term mitigation were the same irrespective of contaminant.
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