This Company Is Using the Sun To Curb Water Crisis in Kenya

Provision of clean water in Kenya continues to face its myriad of challenges, especially in the dry, coastal and highly populated urban areas, 41 percent of Kenyans still rely on unimproved water sources, while 59 percent of Kenyans use unimproved sanitation solutions.

Worse still, is that 300,000 children die every year due to water-borne diseases which can easily be evaded by the provision of clean water. This non-profit organization has come to the rescue of one such town in Coastal part of Kenya, Kiunga.

GivePower is leveraging on its first-ever solar-powered desalination plant which is able to provide approximately 75,000 liters of fresh water each day to people living in the coasts of Kiunga.

The firm is using advanced filtration systems and new solar-powered desalination technology to convert sea and brackish salt water into clean water.

It was opened up in July 2018 and is now able to support almost 25,000 people, the Kiunga facility initially cost USD 500,000 to build and part of their initial funding came from a USD 250,000 grant by Bank of America last year. The firm hopes to generate USD 100,000 per year from the plant.

Hayes Barnard, the founder, and president of GivePower said that the firm is leveraging on solar technology to address the increasingly severe global water crisis that faces the developing world.

“With our background in off-grid clean energy, GivePower can immediately help by deploying solar water farm solutions to save lives in areas throughout the world that suffer from prolonged water scarcity,” he said.

Besides the solar water plant, the nonprofit organization says that it has deployed more than 2,650 solar-powered energy systems to schools, medical clinics, and villages in 17 developing countries

“GivePower is focusing its efforts on the most critical use case of sustainable energy: reliable access to clean water, and then funnel that money into building new facilities. The eventual goal is to cut costs to USD 100,00 per solar-powered desalination plant in the future,” he said.

It is not the only desalination plant in course in the Coastal region, Spanish company Almar Water Solutions company and Switzerland’s Aqua Swiss are yet to build similar plants worth USD157 mn after winning the contracts to begin the construction.

The one constructed by the Spanish company will have the capacity to hold 100,000 cubic meters per day of drinking water while the second one will have the capacity to hold 30,000 cubic meters.

The plants will be able to provide over one million locals with drinking water and will be managed for 25 years.

Featured Image Courtesy: Standardmedia.co.ke