An essential component of IDE’s Rural Prosperity Initiative (RPI) is design and development of several low cost technologies which have the potential to dramatically improve the incomes of poor rural households. Here are some updates of work in progress at our Technology Development Facility in Ethiopia from the end of the project’s second year:
Treadle pumps
Work continues in the development of a lightweight, low cost pump for use in Africa. Twenty test units were recently distributed to farmers in Zambia for field testing, and a systematic review of pump components is underway to select the best features for cost and performance to incorporate into a new design.
Rope pumps
IDE’s standard model of hand-cranked pump has been redesigned, resulting in very satisfactory performance. We are also continuing development of a pedal-driven model. The results so far are very promising, and prototype testing will be complete early this year.
Solar powered pumps
We have two solar powered steam engine pumps running successfully in the laboratory that are now ready for testing under field conditions. We’re working on modifications which will further reduce the cost and achieve higher overall solar input-to-water delivery efficiency.
Wind powered pumps
A study of available designs did not identify any off-the-shelf windmill designs for small plot irrigation, but several design options could potentially modified for irrigation pumping. A prototype windmill-driven pump will be tested in Ethiopia in early 2009.
Water storage
We recently began trial production of 3,000 200-liter hanging header bags to feed drip irrigation systems, and are currently testing them for durability. Later this year, we will begin testing them on farms and getting farmer feedback. A 10,000 liter water storage bag made of high density polyethylene material costing $125 has been successfully tested. In Myanmar, bamboo-supported plastic tanks are being tested on more than 150 small farms. In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, protoype versions of these tanks proved essential to relief efforts.
See my blog:
http://northshorefinishingwellgroup.blogspot.com/
Polak’s response:
I’m very interesting about IDE program. Because We are live in rural area and we need to many knowledge about agriculture.
The information on the website is very interesting but is entirely anecdotal. It would be good if IDE did more indepth analyses of the outcomes and impacts of its programs, lessons learned, etc and published them transparently. I am currently doing a project for UNDP in Zambia, to recommend measures for responding to climate change, and the lack of systematic information makes it difficult to recommend strongly supporting programs like this.
Doug:
Thanks for your comment. We do quite a bit of analyses of our projects in each of the ways you describe, but you’re right, until now we have mostly relied on outside parties to publish progress and lessons learned. UNDP, for instance, has published some of our studies over the years, and those are available on various parts of our site, but often they are not easy to find. However, we are now working hard on an “iQ Dashboard” to be live on our site which will allow users to track progress of our projects on a monthly basis as data comes in from the field. We are committed to as much transparency as is now possible with better technology, but as you are finding in your research, it can be a real challenge, especially in rural African settings, to obtain/transmit current and accurate data.
In addition, we are now working on a formal Environmental Assessment process to be used on all of our future projects, as well as many of our ongoing projects in order to assess impacts in the most systematic way possible. Stay tuned. We should be rolling out much more of this type of functionality on the site in the coming months.