Environmental Science and Technology recently announced its Best Papers of 2010. “End-User Preferences for and Performance of Competing POU Water Treatment Technologies among the Rural Poor of Kenya”, co-authored by personnel from Aquaya and researchers from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, was selected as the top paper in the Environmental Policy category.
Check out the journal’s announcement below or download it here.
Our Water Business Kits™ (WBK) program was born out of a recognition that it is demand rather than need that is essential to creating lasting, scalable safe drinking water solutions. The WBK business model is rooted in the independent, small-scale water treatment and vending industries that Aquaya first studied in Indonesia and the Philippines. Similar water treatment and vending business models are prevalent throughout SouthEast Asia and Latin America, where they represent a local, entrepreneurial solution to consumer demand for treated drinking water. Currently, this is the only decentralized safe water delivery model that has grown to scale and reached low-income consumers.
Water treatment and vending businesses utilize ‘off-the-shelf water treatment technologies that enable operators with little or no prior water treatment experience to produce drinking water that meets international quality standards.
In Southeast Asia, these businesses initially catered to affluent and middle-income consumers. Over time, as the businesses proliferated, prices dropped due to competition. The water sold by these shops retained an aspirational quality with consumers while reaching a price point that allowed the businesses to serve low-income consumers as well as the affluent.
Today in Kenya there is a nascent small-scale water treatment and vending industry that caters predominantly to middle and high-income consumers. Aquaya’s WBK program, which is supported by the International Finance Corporation and the Mulago Foundation, is designed to spur the growth of this industry by attracting and supporting independent entrepreneurs.
In collaboration with Kenyan entrepreneurs, we are launching a series of ‘demonstration’ water treatment businesses to prove the strong consumer demand for high quality drinking water and stimulate additional entrepreneurial activity. Local businessman, David Maina, started the first demonstration business, the Pure Water Shop, in Buru Buru Estate, Nairobi, at the end of 2010.
The demonstration businesses will be followed by the development and dissemination of the actual business kit, which will provide new water entrepreneurs with knowledge required to establish a successful water treatment business, including information on local sources of water treatment equipment sales and support, access to financing, regulatory compliance advice, a marketing plan, quality control and quality assurance procedures, and operations software.
We are pleased to announce that Ekta Patel has recently joined the Aquaya team to serve as Country Manager for our Kenya office. Ekta grew up in Kenya and holds degrees from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and the University of Cape Town. She brings a passion for social entrepreneurship to the WBK Kenya team.