MADE IN KENYA: Ubuntu Waterhub Africa creating innovations to manage water supply

To help water vendors and institutions manage water supply, a Kenyan engineer founded Ubuntu Waterhub Africa , a venture in sustainable water supply.

Engineer Kimali Muthoka was working in West Africa when he saw how people struggled to access clean water, and how available water went to waste due to poor handling.

When he returned to Kenya, he founded Ubuntu Waterhub Africa, an innovation hub that makes different systems targeting water vendors and institutions.

"I realised there was a very big gap in water management. That is how I came up with Ubuntu Waterhub Africa. We are a technology company, we make different systems that support sustainable water distribution," Kimali says.

From water ATMs to prepaid water meters, Ubuntu Waterhub Africa’s innovations aim to ensure sustainable water management, while ensuring water entrepreneurs maximise returns.

Ubuntu Waterhub ATMs work in two different unique ways, both on the user and the vendor’s ends. 

"The user who fetches water has an RFID tag, it’s prepaid so you have to load money through M-Pesa. So you tap the RFID tag to the ATM, it will show you the balance, you select the outlet, the amount you want to spend and ok, so it will start dispensing water. If you don’t have a tag, you come into our system, key in your phone number, select the outlet, the amount, you will get an STK prompt, pay, the water comes out."

"The owner of the waterpoint goes to the system, they have a dashboard, they select every tap, set the tariff, once they do that they just wait for money," Kimali adds.

He says the ATMs rely on network connectivity to work well, and now they are working on new versions of the ATMs that don’t require connectivity to dispense water. 

Besides the innovations, Ubuntu Waterhub is training interested upcoming engineers and developers, some of whom get absorbed by the company. Kimali says, the future is to become the best water technology company in the region.

"We train them on different technologies, because some of them will join our company to make these systems. So we need to make sure that we skill them up. Our goal is to ensure that every village, every person gets access to clean affordable water," he concludes.