Access to safe drinking water is a big challenge to over three hundred million people in rural Sub Sahara Africa who are not covered by public water utilities in rural and small towns. Self-supply using affordable SMARTechs, (Simple, Market-based, Affordable, Repairable Technologies) technologies can potentially bridge this gap, argues Henk Holtslag, a Specialist in low-cost water and sanitation technologies.
SMARTech is a concept promoted by the MetaMeta SMART Centre Group, a Netherlands-based group, and it involves the use of hand-dug wells or manually drilled tube wells, low-cost pedal, hand and solar pumps, rainwater harvesting and underground storage tanks and household water filters to reach remote communities. It is estimated that the average cost of providing “basic service” (an improved water source within 30 minutes return trip from home) through SMARTech is $25/person. According to studies, reaching the same group with machine-drilled boreholes and imported pumps would cost $50 – $150/per
person.
eWASH spoke with Henk Holtslag, who co-initiated the SMARTconcept and is the Senior Advisor of the MetaMeta SMART Centre Group that trains entrepreneurs in the local production of innovative low-cost WASH technologies.
Henk told eWASH that 35 years of promoting the local production of SMARTechs in developing countries has resulted in its use by 2 million people in nine African countries and in Nicaragua. (please see documents below).
In this interview with Dr Babatope Babalobi, Henk also argues that Africa and other developing countries may not achieve sustainable development goal 6.1 on universal water coverage by 2030 if they focus mainly on piped water systems. He canvassed for the promotion of Household Water Treatment and Safe storage (HWTS) in the short run to improve water quality and for other SMARTechs for water quantity particularly in rural areas.
Who is Henk Holtslag, and which institution or organisation do you represent?
My background was shipping forty years ago. Later on, I started working in Africa, Tanzania
and many other countries in rural water supply with a focus on producing technologies that
can be produced locally, well-drilling technologies, pumps, solar pumps etc. What you can
produce locally, does not need import. This provides local skills and spare parts and also
reduces the cost of technologies like pumps. I am now the Adviser of the Smart Centre
Group. This is a group that consist of WASH training centres in nine African countries and
one in Latin America. These centres train the local private sector and small companies in
manual drilling, how to produce drill sets, pumps, solar pumps, and rainwater harvesting.
So, is the Smart Centre Group a funding organisation or a donor organisation? How do you finance your activities?
The Smart Centres are coordinated by the social enterprise Meta Meta based in Wageningen in the Netherlands. We get funds from groups, rotary clubs, governments, and small funders.
Which country have you worked in Africa, and what is the impact of your work?
I started working in Africa forty-five years ago in Tanzania, in a fishing company project
and lateron in Nicaragua in irrigation with windmills Both projects were failures because the
technology was to complicated and to expensive. Based on the failures, we started to improve the technologies and work on rural water supply. I have worked in about twelve countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Niger, and Ghana.
Have you never worked in Nigeria?
Our work is based on invitation; we do not start things ourselves. Our work is based on
requests from organisations with funds because we do not have funds to start things
ourselves. There are no specific reasons I have not worked in Nigeria. We have made some
proposals for rural water supply in Nigeria but these were not funded.
Who does the invitation?
In most countries, it is local organisations. For instance, in Malawi, it was a faith
organisation. In Tanzania, it was a local organisation active in rural development. In
Ethiopia, it was the government, the technical department of the Water Ministry.
What have been your experiences working in Africa?
This is a good and difficult question to answer. There are many differences between Asia and Africa. In most Asian countries, groundwater is easy to access since ground layers are
relatively soft. In Africa ground layers are often hard so other drilling technologies are
needed Also long term training and coaching is needed to make sure that wells and pumps
are of good quality
I was looking at your website (www.washnigeria.com), and you reported that sixty per cent
of the rural water supplies system is not functioning, which is another topic. It is probably
partly because of the lack of technicians and the lack of payment for maintenance or repairs by the users. That is a reason that we focus more on family water systems and water for productive use like irrigation.
Tell us about your recent activities.
At the recent UN Water Conference in New York we presented 2 with 8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRlNf-Ml4ow It explains that we can reach the two
billion people worldwide that do not have safe drinking water yet, through household water
treatment (mainly household water filters) at the cost of four to five dollars per person. It is not a programme or a project. It is an idea.
Household Water Treatment and Safe storage (HWTS) is probably the most cost-effective way to have safe drinking water.
Everybody in the world is drinking water, the challenge is to make that water safe to drink.
The idea of 2 with 8 states that two billion people can have safe drinking water with eight
billion dollars. It seems to be much money, but the cost of providing safe drinking water
with pipe systems, or hand pumps, is twenty-five dollars per person or more. The logic of 2
with 8 is that with four dollars per person, you can at least have safe drinking water at the
point of use.
You must still collect the water, but you can make it safe. The four dollar per
person is a subsidy and is needed to fund large scale awarenes creation on the need for
treatment, the building of supply chains of good products, and subsidies for the poorest 1
Billion people.
Tell us about the Household Water Treatment
The logic is that household water treatment is needed wherever water is not hundred per
cent safe to drink.Even water from boreholes with electric pumps or hand pumps can be
contaminated if the seal of the borehole is not good. If you transport the water from the pump to the house and store it for one day, it can become contaminated. So, the simplest way to make it safe at the point of use is using household water treatment which can be chlorine, boiling or a filter. Many richer people world wide use household water filters so it is a proven market based product. The challenge now is that also the poorer people have household water treatment.
Critics of household water treatment systems will argue that it has several limitations and that only piped water systems can provide safe water and reach a large population. How do you respond to such criticism?
To install piped water system or standpoints in rural areas with less than 50 people per
square km like in Malawi, Congo or other countries is very expensive.So, people take water
from far away standpoints, or rivers, or lakes. In sub-Saharan Africa, three hundred million
people in rural areas still do not even have “basic service”, so an improved water source at a thirty-minute distance from home. For this group to install pipe systems will typically cost a hundred to hundred and fifty dollars per person investment cost (capital expenditure CapEx), which will take a long time.
At the UN water conference in New York, there was a calculation that reaching SDG6.1 will cost a hundred billion dollars a year. The money available at the moment is only about twenty billion dollars a year. So, there is not enough money to reach
SDG6. What do we do in the meantime? As an intermediate solution we could have a
household water filter in all the houses where they do not have safe water. If the piped water comes, that is better, but until then, at least we should ensure that people have safe drinking water, which is possible for four dollars per person.
Are you saying we cannot achieve the SDGs with focusing on pipe systems alone?
The pipe system is long-term for everyone, and it is the best, but who will pay?
There is not enough funds for piped systems to reach the people in rural areas and sometimes in urban areas.
Moreover, even where there is a piped system, for instance, in many African cities water
systems start leaking or due to power cuts are not delivering water. What happens is that the people that have money, the rich and middle class, are buying water filters, even in Europe. Filters is a multi-million dollar business but until now only for the rich. We also need solutions for the poor, those who can not pay. So, household water treatment is not instead of the pipe system; it is an additional service where piped systems or other systems are not functioning well.
There is also an argument that if we had focused more on household water treatment , more people in Africa would have had safe drinking water.
HWTS is an intermediate solution until we have the best solution which is piped systems
into houses As the saying goes “the road to perfect is improvement”; So, household water treatment can be seen as a step towards the perfect long-term solution.
What are the specific advantages of the household water treatment system compared to the pipe system?
The first advantage is that it is treated at the point of use. Even water from tap points is not always safe due to repairs or other reasons. Maybe ten days out of eleven, water is safe, and the day eleven, it is not safe. Than on day eleven your baby still will get sick. If you use a a filter all the time and maintain it well, you will be sure water is safe to drink.
The second argument is that if we want to reach safe water at the point of use, a water filter is ten times cheaper than a pipe system.
SDG6.1 is for water, and the indicator for safely managed water is that you have a piped
system into the house. This means you have a tap in your kitchen; it should be safe to drink water when you open it.
In Sub-Sahara Africa, including Nigeria, three hundred million people in rural areas do not
have “basic water service”. They have to walk more than 30 minutes or take water from the
rivers or open wells.To provide safe drinking water for these three hundred million people
with household water treatment would cost 1.2 billion dollars. This fund is needed for
awareness, the building of supply chains of good quality but affordable water filtersand
subsidies for the poorest people.
So, are you saying African governments at the central and sub-national levels should focus more on household water treatment rather than pipe water systems?
They should not leave the pipe system, but also invest in Household water treatmentAn
example is Ethiopia. There HWTS is part of the national policy. It is part of what they call
self-supply, focusing on improving the water situation of families especially in rural areas. A
number of rural water utilities who see that they cannot always deliver safe drinking
water are now selling water filters. If there is a power outage and people must store water for three days, it can become contaminated. So utilities sell water filters as an additional service to what they already do. Ethiopia can be an example for other countries in this context.
You will agree that donors generally seem uninterested in financing water filter
production. They are more interested in loans or grants for rehabilitating big water infrastructures. What do we need to do to change the perception of donors so that we see them putting funds for household water treatment promotion?
The NGOs, the government, the World Bank all want to reach the same goal: ‘safe water for all’. We can still go on with piped water systems , but use five or ten per cent of water
budget to promote HWTS and for instance start the local production of water filters. With the same money, we will reach ten times more people for water quality.
With the same funds, if we discuss quality, you can reach ten times more people with water filters than with pipe systems.
UNICEF is known globally for supporting many rural water supply programmes. What has been the attitude of UNICEF to your services?
In general, UNICEF favours communal rural water systems with deep boreholes and electric
or handpumps. Initially, they were not very much in favour of household water treatment
since control is difficult, but increasingly they see that we cannot supply all rural people with piped systems only so household water treatment is a good option. So together with the World Health Organisation (WHO), they support the HWTS network that is coordinated by the Canadian organisation CAWST.
One of the challenges of household water treatment systems is that many types of technologies are in the market, and the consumer is sometimes confused about which to pick. What are your recommendations?
Supporting supply chains of good quality products isa task of government regulators and non- government organisations (NGOs) together. It is good that each country has a range of HWTS options that are certified by the local government Water treatment options should
comply with each country's safe water quality indicators. For instance on each product, there should be a label like on food products, where you can see the features of this technology. How many litres can you filter per hour? When do you need to replace the filter element? What is the removing percentage of the bacteria and viruses? If all products have the same type of label, customers can compare the different techniques, and buy what they can afford, and think is the best for their situation.
Talking about these technologies, can you break them down for us? In smart centres, what are the assorted products or services your render?
SMART Centres are training centres. They do not sell products; they only train people and
small companies make them aware of the different technologies, and give them the capacity to construct and sell them. SMART Centres, promote a range of HWTS options like chlorine as one of the cheapest options but also different water filters with membrane filter elements like Sawyer or aqua Clara and filters with ceracmic filter elements like Nazava, or Tulip filters Boiling is also an option but it has disadvantages, especially due to the CO2 emission and the cost of fuel.
Can filters be produced with local materials to make them affordable? Otherwise, it will face the challenge of importing and the product’s final cost.
Yes, several filters can be produced locally. One is the ceramic Pot filter which has a filter
element like a flower pot. It is produced in many countries in Latin America and Africa.
A problem with this filter model is that the the filter element is quite big, it is twenty-five centimetres round, so it is difficult to store, but this is one option. Another option of local
production is like they do in Ethiopia. They importhigh-quality filter elements from China
and produce the plastic containers locally. In that way, cost and imports are reduced to a
minimum. and the result is an excellent quality filter. In this way over three hundred and
fifty thousand filters were locally produced. Similar productions started in Indonesia, Kenya
and Malawi. So, that is another option, import parts and produce the rest locally.
Some of these filters you mentioned have been popularised in Ethiopia and Malawi. What is the average cost?
The average cost of a table top filter with an imported filter element in Malawi is twenty US
dollars. In Ethiopia, there are two models ranging from twenty-three dollars to forty dollars.
You also agree that in many of the policy documents in Africa, the household water treatment system is not emphasised enough. So, what kind of guidelines, policies, and regulations do you think have to be in place to support household water treatment systems?
A first action can be to include HWTS in the national guidelines for safe water. That can be a task of the HWTS network and the World Health Organization. The HWTS network can also stimulate to exchange experiences on failures and success in various parts of the world and develop ideas and activities to scale up household water treatment. Policies on household water treatment are already in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana. So these can be used to formulate regulations in other countries if they are adjusted to the local situation.
I read your background paper on the household water treatment system, where you stated that marketing in Africa has been challenging. Why is this so?
There are several challenges. Firstly, it is a lack of awareness. For instance, many people still think that if water is clear, it is safe for drinking, but even clear water can have bacteria like cholera, and small unseen animals that can make one sick, especially babies and young
children who are not resistant to bacteria yet.
The second challenge is that there is a lack of supply chain. There is no supply chain yet for
good-quality water filters in most African countries. In India, for example, you can buy water filters in every town but in Africa that is not yet developed.
The third challenge is that many people are too poor to buy a water filter. Even if a filter
would be 5 dollar they will rather use it for food. This group needs support, a subsidy. The
three actions we think the stakeholders should focus on is awareness, the building of supply chains and payment systems and support and subsidies for real poor families.
In Nigeria, so many groundwater sources are contaminated. What must we do to ensure that we have quality water when we dig well and drill our boreholes? What technologies do we need to put in place?
The most important part of a borehole is the hygienic seal. If you drill a borehole, you must
avoid the water from the area infiltrating along the casing and going back into your aquifer.
That is the number one condition for a borehole. A good hygiene seal consist of bentonite and some flexible materials. Even concrete sometimes starts cracking after a few years, and could lead to contaminated water going back into the borehole.
Where water is taken from a shallow aquifer and where wells are near to latrines the solution is household water treatment.
Many Nigerian professional water agencies will be interested in your capacity-building services. How can utilities access your training services?
Many organisations and companies focus on pipes systems or standpoints with handpumps
for communal water supply. Our expertise is in rural areas and water for small-scale
irrigation, farmers and so reach the SDG6.1 target group in rural areas. Eighty per cent of
SDG6.1 target group live in rural areas. The logic is that if a farm family has a well, they
can use it for domestic use but also have water for the garden to produce food and irrigation in the dry season. The water for an irrigation well can be made safe to drink through the water filter. Via farm wells SDG6.1 can be reached. Experience is that a family with a well shares water with on average 40 other people so family owned wells serve small
communities.
There is no fixed scheme of training. The training is always based on request and agreement between the two parties. Like a few weeks ago, we did a training on tube well drilling, in Uganda. In Nigeria, you have more experience with drilling household wells than in other countries.
Those interested can look at our website, www.smartcentregroup.com They can also look for the recordings of our two sessions at the United Nations World Water Conference. In these two presentations, you will see the main concept we focus on, household water treatment and self-supply, scaling rural water supply with a focus on agriculture.
Regarding the Borehole drilling technology you mention, what is the average cost?
Cost depend much on the depth , the size of the casing, the pump, and the geology. There is no standard, but cost ranges from two hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars for a
borehole to 40 m deep.
Your final comments?
Thank you for the good questions. This is the first time I have had these questions during an interview. We know the problems but need more discussion on solutions and actions of
SMART Centres can be an example. I thank you for the good questions and the opportunity
to explain this.
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