Our Mission

Our mission is to create sustainable and affordable water services for underserved communities. We believe the water crisis in Uganda and much of the world can only be solved through enterprise-based solutions.

The problem

Over five billion dollars is estimated to have been donated to water charities in 2022 and this number has steadily increased year after year. People want to help. But the solutions being offered aren’t working, because despite more money being donated every year to water charities, the water crisis has continued to grow.

We’ve heard this method of solving the water crisis before, and we’ve done this ourselves: A water organization comes to a water-poor community, drills a borehole (a well), and then leaves the new water source and moves to the next town. Checkmark: Finished. But what plan is in place for the well to be maintained? After all, wells and the equipment that go with them need repairs and maintenance, and groundwater gets contaminated and needs monitored and cleaned. There’s no such thing as “free water forever.” How do organizations address this challenge of sustainability and longevity? Most organizations have the same method of addressing this problem:

Hand over the water source to the community leaders and walk away.

Even if the community leaders don’t privatize the water point as soon as the organization leaves, in order to charge high prices to the community and make a personal profit (this happens all over sub-Saharan Africa); even if they do keep the water source public and only collect money to maintain the water systems; they still don’t have the resources, connections or knowledge to maintain these water systems.

In Karuma, a town of 30,000 residents where our pilot project is located, there are two water sources that were drilled by other organizations as charitable effort. After they drilled, they handed the boreholes over to local leaders and left. One water source was immediately privatized and the now-owner makes a tidy profit, selling to those who can afford his high prices. The other water source has someone who collects funds for its maintenance, but the funds “disappear” and maintenance is never carried out. Both water sources are contaminated and have been making residents sick since not long after they were drilled.

This hand-over method is insincere, and it just doesn’t work. But it’s how billions of dollars are spent “solving the water crisis” all over the world. It’s no wonder the water crisis is only growing.

We have long believed that sustainable revenue-based solutions are needed to help solve the water crisis, and we’ve been searching for a solution for years. We believe we’ve finally found a solution.

The solution

Water privatization has long been our goal in the classic setting where governments fail to provide water infrastructure to their citizens. In essence, the idea is to create a private water utility company that collects just enough revenue to keep water systems maintained and clean. This is a charitable business approach to the water problem instead of the unrealistic “free water forever” approach. And we believe an enterprise-driven approach can work in every country, because business happens in every country.

The key to sustainable water infrastructure is to generate revenue through water sales. If you can find a way to sell water at a cheap enough rate that even the poorest of the poor—the ones who are most affected by the water crisis—can afford it, and if you can maintain your water systems with that revenue, then you’ve solved the problem in that community. You’ve made a utility system that is self-sufficient, that can maintain its own infrastructure, and that will continue providing clean affordable water forever.

We’re doing that in Karuma right now.