The main way of retaining water in Africa is by the use of a hand pump. However it is thought that at any one time over 30% are broken and out of action.
This means that there are alot of people without access to water which is worrying due to the dependence that we as humans have on a resource taken for granted in places such as the U.K. It was only last week that a letter was sent detailing the fact that water would be turned off between the hours of midnight and 5am for repairs and so many people were complaining even though they had no need for that water and those repairs are maintaining our high standards of living! People in Africa are lucky if they have water that is semi clean for a few hours a day.
Any how that is besides the point, it is though that currently more Africans have access to mobile networking facilities than do to advanced clean water systems. The latest idea is to fit hand pumps with mobile transmitters that send a signal when any one device is broken by measuring the flow and movement of water and the hand pump itself. If faulty a signal is to be sent to a head office where a mechanic will be sent out.
Now if you ask me this is all well and good but yet again another unsustainable idea that we have come up with. if they have access to mobile networking then surely it would be better to equip someone in each village with the skills to fix the pump and a hand held device to receive the alerts these skills could then be transferred from generation and give them more skills to retain jobs with in life.
We need to stop encouraging a dependence outside of communities and first start to create complex communities that are completely self-sufficient in sustaining high levels of well being and can score high on the HDI (human development index).
However although i have seen the darker side to this article i believe it is an improvement and the target for meeting the millennium development goal for access to clean water has already been met! that is 2.5 years ahead of target! However, we cannot stop here as over 200million people still have no access and there are still many more goals to be reached including the rights to basic sanitation.
