Our Approach
The water crisis in Ethiopia
According to WHO, 7.5% of the global water crisis is in Ethiopia alone. In fact, 62 million people in Ethiopia don’t have running water at their homes and over 9000 children die every year from preventable diarrheal diseases such as Cholera and typhoid fever. In other words, one in 17 children do not live to see their 5th birthday, and diarrheal disease is the leading cause of death in Ethiopia. Poor roads make it difficult for engineers to reach remote villages to install water supply lines. We tried to figure out the problems that hinder the distribution of goods from cities into rural villages. The fact that rural villages lack basic paved roads makes the transportation of goods difficult and this has been the main cause. The communities in the village areas use water from wells and rivers for their everyday water needs. They struggle every day to get an advantage of basic water.
Our Solutions
Vital Water Purifier (Keske Engineering) is a social enterprise that provides alternative water access solutions for communities with limited or no water access in rural Ethiopia. Our solutions include a number of interventions such as affordable well drilling to build water sources and retail business of WASH products such as water filters and soaps at subsidized prices.
Our main intervention is well drilling for sustainable water access. We create different types of water solutions depending on the nature of the area. We build five types of wells in shallow ground and medium depth levels: hand-dug wells, drilled wells, protected springs, rainwater harvesting, and rehabilitated wells. We collaborate with borehole drilling engineers and the community to determine the best approach for a specific community. Every village differs in resources, population, and distance from water sources. Working with the community on customized solutions makes it more effective. We aim to build over 500 water sources in more than 400 villages to enable 200,000 people to access clean water in the next 5
Our Innovative Distribution Model
We are using existing channels in the Ethiopian Health Ministry to drive sales and distribution. Health extension workers promote and sell our products. Our distribution is powered by cargo motorbikes and our sales team circulates carts full of our products in the pilot region to facilitate a faster sales process. Our water filters last for 2 years and we replace new ones on demand.
We are pioneering a new distribution model in Ethiopia where we create convenient channels to connect, promote, and sell water filters or any other useful product in rural Ethiopia, and set up a successful retail business with strategic partners. With our startup, we are also introducing a relatively new product to rural Ethiopia. We partnered with companies like Ecofiltro which demonstrated success in Guatemala in manufacturing and distributing ceramic pot water filters. We built a retail business where we benefit the rural community by providing water access at their doorsteps. As part of our sales activities, we are bringing awareness to rural Ethiopia about health, the prevention of water-borne diseases, and the benefits of treating water.
