Rob Hygate is the Operations Director of Africa Water Enterprises; a grantee of the UK Government supported Mobile for Development Utilities Innovation Fund which awards grants to innovators who are testing and scaling the use of mobile to improve or increase access to energy, water and sanitation services.
Africa Water Enterprises, with the help of the Mobile for Development Utilities Innovation Fund, supported by the UK Government, have developed a low cost, robust NFC enabled water dispenser called the eWATERtap. Using similar technology to the Oyster Card on the London Underground, using NFC enabled phones, people are able to buy prepaid water credit from existing retail market places, and use this credit on the eWATERtap to dispense water.
Africa Water Enterprises is being run by Rob Hygate, an entrepreneur and innovator with a degree in Scientific Instrumentation with experience in many startup technology companies. He has been involved with The Gambia for 10 years on various utility projects and most recently has been tackling the issue of sustainable maintenance of water resources in developing countries.
The 2015 Millennium Development Goals for water have been met, and the task is now upon us to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2025 to provide clean, safe water for everyone on the planet.
There is huge crisis surrounding installed water resources in developing countries. When they fail, and they often do, there is little local governance or funding to repair the systems. Water revenues are difficult to collect and the systems can go un-repaired for years. Funding from international donors falls short of providing sustainable water systems and people resort to using water from old dirty wells while the installed systems lie unused.
The eWATERtap is connected via LoRa networks to a mobile enabled eWATERhub, and important water usage and service information is uploaded, stored on the eWATERcloud, to be viewed by stakeholders such as government organisations and NGOs. The eWATERtaps can be retro-fitted to existing Water Resources, or supplied with new installations.
The data provides important information for world organisations to check and report on water usage patterns on a personal, village and country wide level, imperative for the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2025.
Africa Water Enterprises, working closely with governments as supervisors, and Mobile Network Operators as mobile money partners, will provide a total sustainable maintenance solution to water resources in developing countries. They will manage the money collection, and provide a turnkey solution to maintaining the water systems, distribution pipework and the eWATERtaps.
Africa Water Enterprises vision is to implement the eWATERtap onto every water resource in all developing countries, through partnerships with other organisations.
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