New mobile citizens and waterpoint sustainability in rural Africa

非洲在移动技术方面的创新可能会形成一个关键平台，以解决其最古老的问题之一--安全可靠的供水。这项研究项目的想法是，系统性的信息僵局一直是农村供水可持续性的根本制约因素。移动通信技术最近的两项创新已经释放了这一制约：第一，安全、普遍和低成本的信息和移动货币系统，使越来越多的非洲农村和城市人能够以越来越低的成本交谈和汇款；第二，牛津大学试行开发了一种数据发射器，可以自动、准确和安全地传输低成本的手泵用水数据。有了定期、可靠和普遍的手泵数据流动，各国政府和捐赠者将不再能够声称投资基于无法核实的数据发挥了作用。每个人都将获得可靠和透明的信息，以即时和简单的标准衡量何时何地可用水的数量，关键的是，随着时间的推移。当手泵发生故障时，每个人都会知道，通过在多个手泵之间分担风险来提供更好的维护服务的新方法将成为可能。捐赠者和政府将不再能够隐藏，公民将能够利用信息的力量采取行动。由于非洲农村人仍然是全球最难接触和最需要安全饮用水的人，这项研究在日益不可预测的气候条件下的潜在发展影响可能会对3.3亿得不到安全饮用水的非洲人的时间节约、健康、教育、收入、性别平等和基本人格尊严产生变革影响。到2012年，获得移动通信服务的非洲人将超过改善的水服务。到2014年，非洲90%的地区将实现移动通信覆盖。最近的这些变化，再加上解决在日益不可预测的气候下挣扎在农村地区的10亿非洲人中的大多数人的真正意愿，为有意义和持久的变化提供了一个具体的机会。农村供水点(手泵)的长期故障和性能不佳是农村贫困的核心问题。水服务得不到改善，导致大多数非洲人，特别是妇女和女孩，在日常生活和生命周期中付出代价；例如，在非洲农村，估计每年有400亿小时从不安全的水源取水，主要是妇女和女孩，每年损失4.48亿个上学日，相关的150万名五岁以下儿童因饮用不安全的水而死亡。尽管在1990至2008年间付出了巨大的努力和数十亿美元的投资，但现在仍有6700万非洲农村人口缺乏安全饮用水，这一统计数据表明，非洲在实现2035年全球安全饮水目标方面进展缓慢。非洲农村地区每两个人中就有一个拥有手机，政府、捐赠者和移动运营商积极寻求新的合作和想法，该项目旨在利用技术创新和政策支持的激增，对牛津大学设计和试验的创新设备进行规模测试。这项技术本身几乎没有什么价值，但它具有变革性的潜力，可以无缝、即时地从偏远和分散的地区捕获和共享数据，为变革开辟新的、令人兴奋的可能性。生活在非洲农村可能不再是长期贫穷和水不安全的代名词。该项目旨在挑战和改变这一状况，以维持和加快非洲农村人口的安全供水。

Africa's innovation in mobile technology may form a key platform to resolve one of its oldest problems - safe and reliable water access. The idea of this research project is that a systemic informational impasse has been a fundamental constraint to rural water supply sustainability. Two recent innovations in mobile communications technology have released this constraint: first, a secure, universal and low-cost information and mobile money system that allows an increasing majority of rural and urban Africans to talk and send money at increasingly lower costs, and second, the pilot development by Oxford University of a data transmitter that can automatically, accurately and securely transmit low-cost data on handpump water use. With a regular, reliable and universal flow of handpump data no longer will governments and donors be able to claim investments have worked based on unverifiable data. Accountable and transparent information will be available for everyone in instant and simple metrics of how much water is available when, where and, critically, over time. When handpumps fail, everyone will know and new ways to provide better maintenance services by sharing risk across multiple handpumps will be possible. Donors and governments will no longer be able to hide and citizens will be to act with the power of information. As rural Africans remain the hardest to reach and most in need of safe water access globally, the potential developmental impacts of this research, under increasingly unpredictable climates, could result in transformational impacts across time-savings, health, education, income, gender equity and basic human dignity for the 330 million Africans without safe water access.By 2012 more Africans will have access to mobile communication services than improved water services. By 2014, 90% of Africa will have mobile communication coverage. These very recent changes in combination with a real appetite to address the majority of one billion Africans struggling in rural areas under increasingly unpredictable climates offers a concrete opportunity for meaningful and lasting change. Chronic failure and under-performance of rural waterpoints (handpumps) is central to rural poverty. Lack of improved water services leads to daily and life-cycle costs for most Africans, but particularly women and girls; for example, in rural Africa an estimated 40 billion hours is spent annually collecting water from unsafe sources, mainly by women and girls, with an associated 448 million lost school days each year and a related 1.5 million deaths in children under five years from drinking unsafe water. Despite significant efforts and billions of dollars of investment between 1990 and 2008, 67 million more rural Africans now lack safe water access, a statistic symptomatic of Africa's faltering progress towards meeting the water access global safe water target twenty years late in 2035.With one in two rural Africans owning a mobile handset and government, donors and mobile operators actively seeking new collaborations and ideas, this project aims to harness this swell of technology innovation and policy support to test at scale an innovative new device designed and piloted by Oxford University. The technology alone has little value but it is transformative potential to capture and share data from remote and dispersed regions seamlessly and instanteously opens up new and exciting possibilities for change. No longer may living in rural Africa be synonymous with being chronically poor and water insecure. This project aims to challenge and change this situation to maintain and accelerate safe water supplies for rural Africans.