Sustainable eWATER Supply in Tanzania

Can IoT enabled eWATER taps provide reliable drinking water in rural Tanzania?

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LOCATION | Tanzania
SECTOR | WASH
TECH | Internet of Things (IoT)
TIMELINE | January-November 2017
PARTNER | eWATER, WaterAid,  The Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology

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The Challenge

Approximately one-third of water points in Tanzania become non-functional after two years due to improper maintenance and repair. Additionally, water access points in rural areas of Tanzania are manned by attendants who charge for their use and are only available to dispense water for a few hours a day. The World Bank estimates that 70% of villages mismanage their water sources. These challenges severely limit people’s access to water and force them to return to unsafe water sources.

The Idea

eWATER utilises a smart tap to dispense water when users pay using mobile money or cash and an IoT cloud server to communicate usage and maintenance data onto a dashboard that tracks key business metrics and tap maintenance. This pilot tested if public revenue raised from the use of eWATER pay taps could pay for the operation and maintenance of the village water system, while providing 24/7 access to clean water.

The Scaling Journey

What we learned

• eWATER significantly improve the experience of collecting water for villages by making water accessible at all times and decreasing the amount of time spent collecting water. 

• Villagers are willing to pay to use eWATER and appreciate the transparency that was provided surrounding the amount of revenue collected. 

• The success of this pilot is underpinned by the efforts of the eWATER team to localise the solution within the rural Tanzanian context, both in hard technology elements and soft cultural elements. Working closely with local governments and having local partners to facilitate the localisation efforts was key to the success of the pilot. 

• Utilising ‘real time’ data from IoT tech in poorly-functioning markets can be enormously beneficial in gaining quick buy-in from local stakeholders.

All photos on this page were taken by the pilot’s implementing partners, eWATER, WaterAid, and The Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology.

What happened next?

Since the completion of the pilot, eWATER have proceeded to scale the solution. In Tanzania, there are now over 600 Smart Taps, which have served over 350,000,000 litres of water and over 180,000 people. For the latest progress consult the team's minute by minute dashboard.

Watch a film about using frontier tech to enable sustainable access to safe water in Tanzania, building on our in-depth evidence on using IoT Sensors for Impact across our portfolio 👇

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Read more

• Watch ‘Smart Water’ - a Frontier Tech Hub film about this pilot

• Learn more about the pilot’s trials — eWATER trials in Babati District, Tanzania

• Read about the unexpected benefits of eWater — Solving the African Water Crisis

• Learn more about how eWater’s technology works —“One token changing the game for sustainable rural water supply in Tanzania”

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