Live monitoring of rural drinking water schemes using mobile phone infrastructure

Post-installation monitoring of rural drinking water projects is costly and time consuming, but at the same time a necessity to ensure a project’s sustainability. Limited financial and human resources restrain the level at which facilitators can follow up on their projects, leaving them with little up to date information. The recent mobile phone revolution in Africa has drastically improved the qualitative information flow between remote project sites and facilitators. The solution presented here uses the same technology to improve the quantitative information flow. A specially developed solar powered unit, with a built in GSMmodem, collects daily data about sales, expenditures and production from the water committee which is operating the system. The data is instantly transmitted and presented to the facilitator by a web interface and any unexpected variations will alert the facilitator, allowing for a swift reaction.