Mobile phone supported water dispensing system for the 'un-watered' population

摘要

Mobile phone penetration and its applications in Africa is one of the surprising phenomena of modern technology. Traditionally known to be facing myriads of challenges, today's African innovators, especially the youth, have leveraged on the continent's mobile revolution to come up with disruptive solutions to some of the continent's challenges. This paper looks at the challenges facing Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services among the rural population and the urban poor who do not have access to piped water supply in Kenya and proposes the use of a simple technology that is supported by the application of mobile money transfer services to improve payment and delivery of water to these segments of the population. We apply smart water metering using Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems integrated with the popular mobile banking system in Kenya, M-Pesa to deliver efficient utilization of water resources and also employ a business model that ensures sustainability of the water supply system.