The Super MoneyMaker Pump

Micro-Irrigation Technologies

Rural Kenyans can no longer rely purely on subsistence farming. They need hard cash to buy enough food and to pay for school fees and healthcare. Yet most live on farms less than two acres in size.

Many thousands of entrepreneurial farmers are now irrigating with KickStart’s manual MoneyMaker irrigation pumps and changing their small subsistence farms into vibrant new commercial enterprises. With irrigation they can grow and sell as many as three to four high value vegetable crops every year, and ensure that the crop is ready for market when the price is high.

Impacts of KickStart MoneyMaker Pumps to date:

• 45,000 pumps in use by poor farmers
• 29,000 new waged jobs created
• $37 million per year in new profits and wages generated by the pumps
• More than 50% of pumps managed by women entrepreneurs
• 4 manufacturers producing pumps
• over 400 retailers selling pumps in Kenya, Tanzania and Mali

Originally posted to the BRINQ Workshop by Patrick Donohue of BRINQ and the Base of the Pyramid Protocol.

After five months of intense work in communities in Kenya and Brazil we've got a long backlog of stories to share. So now that we've got a short breather we thought we'd post a few. This one from Kenya came up recently when we were asked via our colleague & mentor Stuart Hart, "Have you heard of these XAccess guys?"

Actually, yes we have!

In June the BoP Protocol team headed out to the shores of Lake Victoria in Kisumu, Kenya to visit with the XAccess and KickStart folks who were modifying an innovative bicycle for the local market. XAccess is the non-profit sister of XtraCycle, maker of the world's first Sport Utility Bicycle, and KickStart, the NGO formerly known as ApproTEC, is a long time provider of enterprise enabling technologies to low-income communities. KickStart is helping XAccess to commercialize its bicycle in Kenya as the "Bigga Boda", an upgrade to the existing "Boda Boda" bicycle taxis, so named from their early days on the border of Kenya and Uganda where the taxi riders cries of "Border! Border!" eventually morphed into the "Boda Boda" of today.

Solar Cell Rental

Rosa first floated the idea of renting solar equipment in a village in southern Brazil called Encruzilhada, a poor area where many of homes are so remote that they have little hope of being connected to the electric "grid" anytime in the foreseeable future. His biggest challenges weren't technical; they were overcoming people's beliefs that solar energy was unreliable and unaffordable, and then developing cost-effective systems to serve many customers who pay only tiny amounts each month for their electricity. Moving forward, Rosa now identifies leaders in each community to who help him convince people their neighbors that renting solar energy will benefit them, and will cost no more than they are already paying for candles, batteries and lamp oil.

At least 600 families in the region have joined his program. It is a slow process, but Rosa sees Encruzilhada as an essential first step toward his ultimate goal of demonstrating how to reach the 2 billion people worldwide who still live without electricity.

Microcredit

is the extension of very small loans to unemployed, poor entrepreneurs and others living in poverty who are not bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimum qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of financial services to the very poor; apart from loans, it includes savings, microinsurance and other financial innovations.

Photo: Actual Films

Houses of the people who worked with garbage before Ciudad Saludable.

New houses for the locals.

 

Albina Ruiz started worrying about health and environmental problems caused by garbage in Peru when she was a student studying industrial engineering. After writing her thesis, she came up with an idea for a new community-managed system of waste collection that she hoped would serve as a model for urban and rural communities around Peru.

One of the first neighborhoods she worked with was El Cono Norte in Lima, where1.6 million people produced about 600 metric tons of garbage daily. The municipal authorities were only able to process about half of the community's trash. People tossed the rest in streets, rivers and vacant lots, causing serious health problems as well as creating a perpetually ugly environment that many residents found dispiriting.

Ruiz's idea called for micro-entrepreneurs — small business people chosen from the community — to take charge of collecting and processing the garbage, at once addressing another serious problem in the community: unemployment. She helped these businesses get going and set the monthly fee for the service at about $1.50, the cost of a beer, and came up with a wide array of creative marketing schemes — including special gift baskets — to entice families to use the services and, importantly, pay for them regularly and on time.

Ruiz started doing the work alone nearly 20 years ago. She now oversees projects in 20 cities across Peru, employs more than 150 people and serves over 3 million residents. Her approach to waste management is so successful that she has been asked to come up with a national plan for Peru, while other Latin American countries have expressed interest in emulating her method.

In 1997, the NEF began working with 7 villages in Northern Morocco to promote female education and leadership by organizing local literacy initiatives and associating groups of rural women leaders.

The program has since expanded to 15 villages, and in collaboration with the U.S. State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), NEF seeks to establish income-generating projects with one or more parent-teacher associations (PTAs) within these communities.

One of these projects is to sell locally-produced clay cooking ovens. The collection of firewood can take up 120 hours a year for girls, and is thus one obstacle to the education and development of women; burning the firewood for cooking can cause eye and respiratory problems, and also depletes forests. The clay ovens burn cleanly and reduce firewood usage 50-60%. The plan is to have the PTAs distribute stoves through the network of women leaders, who also will promote the idea and train purchasers. Profits made from the sale of stoves will support local education, scholarships for secondary school attendance, adult literacy, and the repair and maintenance of local schools.