Clean Water | Burkina
It is not uncommon that NGOs working in developing countries will install water systems. Most of the time, they’re big and awesome… until they break. In many instances, villages won’t have the funds, parts, or knowledge to repair larger irrigation systems. This is especially true for solar powered solutions. In an attempt to assist villages to become self-sustaining using the new irrigation, we came up with some alternatives. Check out our first clean water spotlight: Burkina Faso.
Burkina is one of the drier countries in West Africa. It sits just south of the Sahara desert, with a 9 month dry season that may see temperatures north of 120f. This climate is tough for growing enough food to feed a community for the year during the short growing season. They also face regular water scarcity as hand dug wells & lakes/ponds dry up.
In 2018, we did a test batch of manual pump irrigation systems in Burkina Faso. The goal… each system built for under $3,000 with all locally sourced parts. A prototype was developed in 2016, and the team of designers took what they learned and built a more efficient system for our 2018 installations. The system uses a manual pump as the only real moving part. There is one small caveat to this system, as it needs to be built next to an existing drilled well.
The system uses a combination of 1000 liter tanks and a 5 meter tall tower enabling gravity to do the hard work moving water throughout fields. This can be most easily seen from the sky like the image below. You can see via the trenches where the piping goes, and then imagine how much further a hose on any of the 9 spigots can move water without having to be carried.
While the system itself is great, the impact it has on a community is even greater. Not only does the system allow for an easier time moving water, it allows communities to grow vegetables all year round with less laborious work. Thankfully, one community helped us out to show this as they’d just started some seedlings in anticipation for the irrigation system.
This also helped us realize thef impact that they’re able to start their crops for the main harvest while it’s still dry season. Having the seedlings already going will help them get more out of the short growing season!
