Insuring against Rural Water Risk in Africa

30多年来，手泵的社区管理一直是非洲农村供水的公认思维模式。这种方法支持每年投资数亿美元来修复损坏的手泵和安装新的手泵。由于五分之四的人生活在农村地区，没有安全可靠的水，这方面的需求很大，特别是因为农村人口往往更贫穷，更容易受到日益增加的气候变化的影响。然而，尽管在农村手泵上投资了数十亿美元，但在非洲农村，三分之一的手泵无法工作。这是一个巨大的投资浪费，并与高昂但可以避免的保健、福利和生计费用有关。在财政紧缩时期，各国政府正确地更加努力地思考更可持续的解决方案，为通常为手动泵买单的纳税人提供更大的资金价值。令人鼓舞的是，手动泵故障的风险具有可保风险的所有特征。牛津大学研究人员最近的一项技术突破使保险模式变得可行。研究人员设计并成功推出了一款智能手动泵，它可以自动将其使用频率发送给准备响应的维护团队。这提供了良好和可靠的数据，定期了解如何手动泵的工作和关键时，他们失败，使训练有素的机械师可以迅速走出修理泵。像任何保险模式一样，更多的手泵保费较低，因为它们将风险分散到所有用户身上。农村非洲人已经习惯了健康和牲畜保险产品，所以这将是一个自然的延伸。目前尚不清楚的是，用户将支付多少费用，以及他们想要什么水平的维护服务。手泵通常被一百多人用于饮用水和牲畜饮水。了解人们的支付偏好对于设计社会可接受的保险产品至关重要。同样重要的是，要了解非洲有哪些保险产品，以及这些产品的表现如何，以便考虑现实的替代办法。将消费者需求与保险供应联系起来，将为下一阶段的研究提供可靠的基础，以测试这种新的手泵保险产品。项目合作伙伴包括联合国儿童基金会（UNICEF）和代表移动的电话公司和运营商的全球机构（GSMA），对这项研究充满了兴奋和兴趣。肯尼亚政府也非常支持水服务管理委员会的工作，这是他们为所有肯尼亚公民提供安全用水的任务的一部分。超过一半的肯尼亚农村人口缺乏安全可靠的水，因此真实的需要解决手泵的性能问题。但肯尼亚并不是独一无二的。在整个非洲农村地区，也面临着类似的问题。如果这个项目成功，它可以帮助2.76亿非洲农村人口获得安全可靠的水，使他们的生活和未来更加健康和富裕。这对每个人来说都是好消息。

Community management of handpumps has been the accepted mode of thinking for rural water supply over three decades in Africa. The approach underpins the hundreds of millions of US dollars invested each year to fix broken handpumps and install new ones. With four out of five people without safe and reliable water living in rural areas the need is great, particularly as rural people tend to be poorer and be more vulnerable to increasing climate variability. However, despite billions invested in rural handpumps one in three handpumps do not work in rural Africa. This represents a huge wasted investment and is associated with high but avoidable health, welfare and livelihood costs. In times of austerity governments are rightly thinking harder on more sustainable solutions that provide greater value for money for taxpayers who generally foot the handpump bill. Encouragingly, the risk of handpump breakdown bears all the hallmarks of an insurable risk. A recent technological break-through by researchers at Oxford University makes an insurance model now feasible. The researchers designed and successfully launched a smart handpump that automatically texts how often it is being used to a maintenance team ready to respond. This provides good and reliable data on a regular basis to know how handpumps are working and critically when they fail so a trained mechanic can quickly get out to repair the pump. Like any insurance model premiums are lower with more handpumps as they spread the risk across all users. Rural Africans are already used to health and livestock insurance products so this would be a natural extension. What is not clear is how much users would pay and what level of maintenance service they would want. Handpumps are used by often over a hundred people for drinking water and for watering livestock. Understanding people's payment preferences is critical to designing a socially-acceptable insurance product. Equally it is important to know what insurance products are available in Africa and how they are performing to consider realistic alternatives. Linking consumer demand with insurance supply will then provide a credible basis to test such a new handpump insurance product in the next phase of the research. There is a lot of excitement and interest in the research with the project partners including the United Nations Children Foundation (UNICEF) and the global body representing mobile phone companies and operators (GSMA). The Kenyan government is also very supportive with the Water Services Regulatory Board a partner in the work as part of their mandate to deliver safe water to all Kenyan citizens. With over half of rural Kenyans lacking safe and reliable water there is a real need to address handpump performance. Kenya is not unique though. Across rural Africa similar problems are faced. If this project is successful it could help the 276 million rural Africans access safe and reliable water to make their lives and futures healthy and wealthier. That would be good news for everyone.