FairWater is an independent Development Organization, we focus on promoting realistic sustainable low-cost solutions for Rural Water & Sanitation (WatSan). We have been involved in WatSan projects in Africa since 1985 and have an active network in most African countries.

We specifically focus on:
- Rehabiliation of abandoned handpumps, specifically for schools in Africa >> Afripump
- Improving handpump technology to make handpumps more sustainable >> Afripump
- Promotion of safe drinking water for households, Schools & Hospitals >> Kisii water filter
- Promotion of rainwater Harvesting, specifically for Schools & Hospitals.
- Dissimination of WatSan information on the internet >> WatSan.org
- Combating WatSan Corruption and in-effient use of funding >> WatSan.org

Our vision is, that with the best equipment, WatSan projects can achieve a more sustainable impact and do more with the same amount of funding.

How to make water supply sustainable?
Groundwater is ideal for water supply because it is safer and normally available throughout the year and a handpump is the most simple device to lift groundwater to the surface. However, with time it became clear that the majority of the donated handpumps are soon abandoned without donor support, especially in rural Africa.

African Handpump Drama...
Studies show that about 90 % of most handpumps break down within 3 years due to worn out or broken parts (i.e. data from a detailed study in Malawi on 375 handpumps, P. Hawkins, WEDC Conference 2001 in Zambia).
A recent worldwide handpump conference (Accra, Ghana, December 2006) only could conclude that the overall situation is still the same.

Suprisingly, this is still not well know by key decision makers

This may well be due to the fact that most water projects only mention in their reports how many new handpumps they have installed, not what happens with these pumps after some years.
The overall conclusion is that a hidden tragedy is slowly spreading out over Africa. In the meantime, most projects are still making unsustainable water points while communities are loosing interest and don't want handpumps anymore.

What went wrong?
Handpumps need some kind of maintenance. In the beginning, in the years 1980 - 1990, it was argued that the community should take care of the maintenance. Therefore water projects were focussed on training communities for the Operation & Maintenance (O&M). This was called the VLOM approach (Village Level Operated & Maintained) and it was expected that this community involvement simply would solve the problem.
However, all studies showed that the major cause of the abandoned handpumps are more related to the fragile handpump design that causes many breakdowns and the need of parts that wear out relatively fast, while these necessary spare parts as well as the technical skills to replace them are generally not available after a while.

As a response to this, in many countries water projects tried to establish a spare part supply system through local shops. However, this approach failed due to the low profit for the shops that were supposed to sell these handpump spares. Result: most community handpumps were still breaking down and abandonned after some years.

Software without good Hardware goes Nowhere
Training of communities is fine, but if no spares are available, also training makes little sense in the end. Therefore, if the handpumps would only be more reliable, this would already help a lot. However, due to budget considerations, many water projects often prefer to buy cheap and fragile handpumps, although the price of a handpump is only a small fraction of the total investment of a water point.

Handpump maintenance and spare parts supply in rural Africa therefore remains a problem. Many communites went back to their traditional unsafe and sometimes distant water sources when their handpump breaks down beyond repair.

Conclussion: Millions of donor dollars are lost each year.

In the meantime handpumps are getting a bad reputation and many communities prefer a simple dug well with a bucket on a rope. But duf wells also have its disadvantages, not only on the depth limitations, but also on the protection of the water source and the long term costs of maintenance.

New development in handpump design
Recently, based on the proven succes of the Jansen Venneboer reliable Volanta handpump, this Dutch Company has modified, improved and simplyfied the famous Volanta handpump and also changed the flywheel for a handle.
This new Volanta-with-a-handle is called the Afripump. This new handpump has the same sub-surface components as the Volanta, but is much cheaper, very simple, needs no spare parts to function, pumps more water than any comparable handpump on the market, from 1 to 100 m deep and can be completely maintaned by the Community itself; the Afripump is therefore the first real VLOM handpump and considered a breakthrough in rural water supply.

The Afripump; green technology
When standard handpumps need to be replaced every 3 - 5 years, this will obviously create an additional stress on the environmnet because of the energy and materials used and CO2 emissions produced. To compensate the total environmnetal footprint of one single handpump in Africa we need to plant about one football field of new trees. It is obvious that we cannaot go on like this year after year until the year 2050 and beyond.
If we consider this, it makes a lot of sense to choose for more sustainable products like the Afripump to avoid the continous stress to the environmnet of rehabilitation projects.

The Afripump is also environmental friendly because is uses less materials in case of a new borehole; due to the integration of the rising main in the casing of the borehole a PVC rising main (like other handpumps have) is not necessay anymore and the water can be pumped dircetly from the borehole casing.
This option also makes the Afripump much cheaper than any other handpump. We therefore strongly promote this handpump on this website.

Last but not Least
In fact, the most important reason for choosing Afripump is off course for the community itself. They deserve the best solution possible to solve the need for their precious daily water for now and for the future. We feel that it is rather unrealistic now to continue with the fragile and cheap old fashion "standard" handpumps when the Afripump solution is now available and so easy to order.


How to make safe drinking water?
Although the water may come from a “safe” water source (i.e. a protected well, handpump, or even from a tap at home) the results of bacteriological water tests in many studies showed that the quality of the water consumed is normally below acceptable standards. Consequently, water borne diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid and cholera remain epidemic.

The reason for poor water quality at the point of use level is two-fold.

  1. The water source itself maybe polluted (i.e. poorly protected sources, groundwater pollution due to the presence of latrines, or because of poor maintenance of a piped water system).
  2. The storage of drinking water at home is not safe. The water is often stored in buckets or traditional clay pots without a cover or in larger tanks near the house. Both options offers many opportunities for recontamination of water that may come from a safe water source
When aware of these problems, most people boil the water before drinking. However, boiling of water is cumbersome, expensive and also uses large quantities of charcoal, firewood or other energy. On top of that, the boiled water should again also be stored in a safe way, so the problem repeats itself.
In addition to that, when a water company may add some chlorine to the piped water system for desinfection, this chlorine also disappears with the boiling and the water remains without any protection when it is stored in a bucket.

FairWater promotes simple Ceramic filters
After evaluation of all possible options to solve these problems, we concluded that the most simple and reliable solution is offered by ceramic filter candles. Such ceramic filters are generally available on the market as replacement sets for more expensive filter units and can be used in plastic buckets.
The do-it-yourself filter system purifies the water and at the same time provides a safe storage of the filtered water. We advise to use the quality ceramic filters from Brazil, which have a good price / quality ratio, with activated carbon and coloidal silver nitrate to prevent bacteria growth inside the filter.

More on this issue on this website, read about the Kisii water filter.
(or search on Google.com for "Kisii water filter"


WatSan information on the internet:
Although there are many organizations working in Water & Sanitation, it is still difficult to access the latest and best information on Water & Sanitation issues.

We support therefore two new websites:

WatSan.org which is a website with general WatSan information, where visitors can find a WatSan forum with discussions and upload and find a wide range of documents and watsan studies.

WATSAN.COM This website provides a large database of addresses of Organziations and Companies in the Water sector worldwide, together with news, events, job search and a marketplace for the water sector.

Both websites are interactive; that means that visitors can upload their information, documents, studies and experiences, as well as making a publicity page for their organization with address data, email contacts and websites.

Who is
FairWater is an independent Development Organization based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The founder, Paul van Beers holds an MSc in Environmental Hydrology and has an  international background of over 25 years in research, implementation, consultancies and project management on Water Supply, Hydrology and Environment in Africa and Europe. He is a member of the Dutch NEDWORC Consultants for Development Foundation and a also founding board member of the Global Rainwater Harvesting Collective and has worked for Universities, Consultancy firms, The World Bank, and National and International NGOs. 



With the Volanta - Afripump
the WatSan Millennium Goals
become feasable at low cost

We promote this new technology

because of :

the simple construction

no spare parts needed

waterflow over 20 litre/min.

no special tools needed

cap is secured with a lock

lifting water from 1 to 100 m deep

handle with counterweight

spout can be modified

no borehole casing needed

partly local production possible

lifetime 15+ years


The Volanta flywheel pump
proven technology for sustainable
Community Water Supply
for up to 2.500 persons per day


Contact us for more info

Simple Low-Cost Water filter

house hold water roofwater tank

School roofwater subsurface tank
see also

Global Rainwater Harvesting Collective