Hospitals and residents in areas with clean water scarcity will soon have access.
This is after WaterKiosk revealed plans to increase access to clean water in hospitals and selected counties in Kenya and put them on solar power supply.
WaterKiosk is a company that installs, operates and maintains solar water desalination systems for off-grid communities around Africa including Kenya.
According to Waterkiosk Africa co-founder Samuel Kinyanjui, the move will make hospitals and residents get water and power independently, impacting more people.
He noted that identifying the facility that needs water depends on several factors, such as the need for clean hygiene water, a facility with a bed capacity of 25 and above and one with an existing saline borehole.
Kinyanjui said the plan is to expand and dispense over 10 million litres per day of hygienic clean water, covering Africa, including Kenya.
The project installations cut across Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Somali, Somaliland, Botswana and Senegal.
Kinyanjui noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, a need for clean hygiene water emerged as one of the critical needs for hospitals, prompting the company to prioritise these institutions more.
“The pandemic well demonstrated the critical role hygiene water plays in people’s lives and the safe operation in the health sector,” Kinyanjui said.
“As an emergency response, a solar water desalination project was implemented, to mitigate the impact of the pandemic by supplying over one million litres of hygiene drinking water daily, in 30 key hospitals across East Africa,” he noted.
The Solar Water desalination systems installed in the beneficiary hospitals vary from between 20,000 litres per day to 100,000 litres per day.
The project was under a donation program supported via the develoPPP.de programme and implemented by DEG on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Technology Partner, Boreal Light GmbH.
The treatment process starts by filtering contaminated resources, removing 99 per cent of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) to produce clean water, devoid of organic/inorganic contaminants, bacteria, and viruses, all powered directly by Solar energy without expensive battery storage.
Designed as an independent, low-maintenance, off-grid system, the desalination system operates without diesel generators or grid connections, using DC electricity from solar panels.
A small solar array suffices for its power needs, making it ideal for areas lacking clean water access.
The installed systems are monitored remotely ensuring optimal system performance.
“We ensure the content of minerals and the pH in water is according to the standards placed by the World Health Organisation and Kenya Standards Act,” he said.
Currently, the company has covered Kenya and Tanzania with respect to the hospital Solar water desalination project, and dispensing over one million litres of clean hygiene per day.
WaterKiosk Africa also runs an Academy (WaterKiosk Academy) that aims at training different categories of people including operators, users and owners, among others.
The training covers basic technology and detailed emphasis on our Solar Desalination System and technology.
So far, Waterkiosk has managed to provide safe and clean water to 30 hospitals with a daily production capacity of 1,000,000 litres, benefitting six million people annually.
This has enabled the company to create direct jobs for 55 people and 150 indirectly.