By James O'Brien
When your product is instrumental in creating 150,000 new businesses and increases its users' incomes by 500 percent, the world takes notice. But the product in question isn’t an app or the latest digital device. It’s a water pump, and it’s changing lives and building businesses in Africa’s developing economies.
The pump is produced by KickStart, a company that develops new irrigation technologies and then puts them into the hands of local entrepreneurs in Africa. It changes lives by putting the power of affordable, sustainable water-delivery to crops into the hands of small-farm owners throughout Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Zambia.
In Kenya, Geoffrey Maina said that KickStart has changed his life, and it has changed the future for his three children. With the money he's earned from the crops he can now more effectively irrigate, he’s bought his own land, built a house for his family, and is hiring his neighbors to work with him.
“I have big plans for my children’s schooling,” Maina told documentary makers for KickStart. “So that they can get to the highest levels of education.”
Farmers using KickStart's MoneyMaker Max pump. (Photo courtesy of KickStart)
Bringing New Irrigation to a Continent
One Kickstart founder came to Africa as a scholar. The other arrived as a carpenter and a volunteer. But both Martin Fisher and Nick Moon eventually fell in love with Kenya.
They met in the country while working on projects for British aid organizations. They helped build schools and assisted in setting up job training programs. Later, they worked together on rural water solutions.
Soon enough, the pair began to work together on their own model for tackling Africa's water problem. Most small-scale farmers on that continent depend on rain — an unreliable source of water for agriculture. In 1998, Fisher and Moon presented these farmers with an affordable solution: the MoneyMaker irrigation pump.
Like Maina, Hannah is a small farmer in Kenya. She has been using KickStart's new Hip Pump --- a new variation of the original MoneyMaker -- for more than two years. She described how the pump has changed the way she works in a KickStart-produced documentary.
“Before, I was just planting my plants. To carry a bucket was so hard for me,” she said. “But now, I just do the pump and water can go everywhere.”
By increasing the amount of crops she can water, grow, and eventually sell, the Hip Pump has helped Hannah pay for her child to go to school.
Nearly A Quarter Of A Million Water Pumps And Counting
KickStart has sold more than 235,000 pumps to date across the developing nations of Africa. The impact these pumps have had on the lives of those who use them is nothing short of seismic.
KickStart's flagship product, the MoneyMaker pump, has given around 240,000 children the chance to attend school. It also generates approximately $130 million in annual profits and wages for its users.
These wins haven't come easily. One of the first hurdles is producing these hundreds of thousands of pumps so that the most farmers can take advantage of them.
In 2013, Citi's Microfinance and Commercial Bank divisions joined with the Skoll Foundation to lend KickStart $2 million in working capital.
Robert Annibale, global director of Citi Community Development and Finance, said cash injections of this kind are critical to helping organizations like KickStart grow effectively.
"One of the challenges, if you don't have the working credit — the working cash flow — is you're doing everything, especially in an advanced production, on a smaller order," he said.
He said working capital changes that equation.
"This helps free them up to be able to produce more and to distribute it much more widely," Annibale said.
Next, the KickStart team approaches farmers with care and compelling information. The goal of these meetings is to help crop managers shift from a one- or two-season agricultural model to a three- or four-season cycle. It's not always an easy task.
"It requires a lot of convincing," said David Estrada, senior development manager at KickStart. "These farmers have been relying on rain-fed farming for generations. Their parents did it, their grandparents did it, and their great-grandparents did it. Convincing them and educating them on the benefits of irrigation … that's been one of our biggest challenges."
However, once KickStart's pumps are in farmers' hands, the power of the simple design becomes clear.
Using his MoneyMaker, Maina pumps water by working a pair of pedals with his feet. The water is pressurized through a hose pipe and emerges from a sprayer that an assistant uses to irrigate the farm's crops. Once farmers realize the implications that this pump can have on their income, they rarely need more convincing.
Equally convincing are KickStart's cost calculations: for just $65, the pump can lift an individual out of poverty for good. A family of four can do the same for $330. These are small prices to pay indeed for a lifetime of better living.
Reaching the Next Wave of Farmers
With stories like Maina’s and Hannah's in place, KickStart is now working to expand, and the effort is on to make it possible for even the most cash-strapped farmer to acquire his or her own pump.
One option involves working with local microfinance institutions to secure loans that help farmers acquire their own pumps. KickStart is also developing a mobile layaway app, allowing farm owners to make micropayments via their cell phones.
"Once they save enough, they get a message that says, 'Congratulations, you've saved enough to buy the pump'," Estrada said. "Then they're able to go to their local dealer's shop and pick it up."
A rent-to-own system is still in the early stages of testing. This program gives farmers immediate access to pumps after making a small down payment. The farmers then pay off the balance as their newly irrigated crops make more money.
Despite KickStart’s considerable success, the company’s reach is still significantly limited. In Kenya, for example, Estrada said that the company has reached only about 10 percent of its market potential.
"It's essentially because word of mouth is slow," he said.
As it turns out, many farmers who switched to the pump and experienced a high amount of requests for money from their neighbors. As a result, pump users tend to keep quiet about their newfound prosperity.
Estrada said this factor requires the KickStart team to make an extra effort to reach these farmers and demonstrate how the pump can benefit them.
"We’ve proven the impact,” he said. “And we know that it's going to generate more income and greater food security."
James O’Brien is a freelance writer who covers business, technology and travel.
