The challenge
Rural villages lacked reliable water, and hand pumps took hard physical effort.
The case
In the 2000s, PlayPumps International installed more than 1,000 merry-go-rounds in South Africa and neighboring countries, including Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho and Malawi. The pumps pushed groundwater into storage tanks as children spun them, and were funded partly by billboard advertising on the tanks and backed by major donors. Reviews found children didn't play long enough to meet communities' water needs, leaving adults, often women, to push the wheel. The pumps were expensive and hard to repair locally, and many broke or were replaced. In 2009 the organization stopped installing new pumps and handed its remaining stock to the NGO Water For People. An unreleased report commissioned by Mozambique's government, cited by PBS Frontline/World, found pumps out of commission for up to 17 months.
Why it didn't work
A charming idea scaled on the strength of its story, without asking communities what they needed or testing it first. Maintenance and local repair capacity decide whether infrastructure lasts.
Sources
- Frontline/World (2010). Southern Africa: Troubled Water. PBS.
- Frontline/World (2010). Southern Africa: Troubled Water. PBS.
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