Tag Archives: África

The Story of PlayPumps: Merry-go-rounds, Water, and Failures in Development Aid

Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Innovation is a process of failure and learning from failure. The same is true in development cooperation. Take PlayPumps for example, which aimed to take the energy produced by children playing on a merry-go-round to pump water up from a borehole, supplying villages with clean, effortless drinking water. An inspired, ingenious plan – how could, and did, it go wrong?
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Water for sustainable peace

The UN Security Council states that “climate change poses a real threat to international peace and security”. War and drought in Somalia are leading an unprecedented migration across the border into Kenya. Lack of access to water remains one of the major drivers of the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Water becomes, then, a key element for peace.
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