Columnists
Water creation industry beckons, step forward our entrepreneurs
Wednesday June 28 2023
Carcasses of livestock at Tigo village in Marsabit County on February 10, 2023. Herders are crying foul as the ongoing drought wipes out their livestock. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NMG
Kenya is one of the most vibrant startup markets in Africa, say investors. Yet, still, the entrepreneurial action is so limited compared with the potential.
Take our state of drought. Parts of the Horn of Africa have suffered six successive failed rains since 2020. We have all understood the devastation to livestock caused by this latest run of impaired rains, the limp crops, dried-up river beds, and shortages of water, for drinking, washing, and sanitation.
Yet technologies have been evolving and expanding in water creation for more than a decade: so, where is our water creation industry?
For sure, we have a single start-up with what appears as a reverse-engineered air conditioning unit creating hundreds of litres of water a day.
In Uganda, one air conditioning firm also looks to be weighing up a similar path. Also appearing, but seemingly aid-funded, are solar-powered desalination plants, opening up new water supplies along the coast and from brackish water in the Rift (in Ethiopia).
Yet, run a global search and it’s easy enough to find mini-desalination plants, some so small they are portable: so how is it that the nearest dealership is in South Africa?
Imagine, instead, water makers here as a purchase akin to a generator, ideally powered by the sun: we could have far more water for drinking and sanitation, maybe even some for some water-efficient drip irrigation.
And then there are the other technologies. The reason we aren’t developing any of these, claim commentators, is because of our relatively weak interest in science and engineering.
But, come on, how many students do we have going, and been through, engineering courses and not even a few of them are into water creation as we live through drought after drought?
Elsewhere, innovators are working with fine mesh that captures dew and systems for harvesting air humidity using highly water-absorbent chemicals, such as silica and zeolite.
In fact, technologies abound, but not in our space.
Yet the funding is there for those who are ready to turn to water creation. A row of investors has opened applications in recent weeks and months for climate adaptation businesses — Google, Africa Youth Adaptation Fund, Climate Launchpad, Catalyst, Global South Fund and many others.
Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) is, likewise, on permanent watch for these same kinds of startups.
So the need is there, the funding is there: the brake could be the business model to get this out of aid and into business. Yet even there, from M-Kopa’s model of instalment payments for solar power to community irrigation systems now cost-sharing across multiple customers, we have models that are working.
So just for our entrepreneurs to now step forward.
The writer is a development communication specialist.
