African Innovations in Affordable Drinking Water

A water purification system has been designed to offer a self-service drinking water refill solution for consumers.

The system offers an alternative to single-use plastic water bottles and sachets and uses mobile technology to remotely track water usage at retailers across Africa.  

The Waterpod has been launched by I-Drop Water in partnership with multinational technology and water purification company, Bluewater. The system delivers purification for specific water environments by combining the necessary technologies required for each site, while using less than one square meter of floor space.

Cost savings are passed to the consumer by setting a price of up to 90% less than bottled water, and to the retailer through gross profit on a per-litre sale. Sales and purchases are monitored using a real time Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM, platform developed specifically for the application.

The compact water-refill machine features high purification specifications and is designed to deliver refills for container sizes between 1 ℓ and 25 ℓ.

“The Waterpod is a completely new and innovative way for affordable drinking water refills to be sold in retail environments across Africa and beyond. It is the result of almost four years of product development, testing and data that we’ve gathered from across the length and breadth of Africa,” says I-Drop Water co-founder and Bluewater director of African operations, James Steere.

Point-of-use water purification technology has been designed for direct consumer applications in both commercial and residential environments, to create a supply of purified drinking water from municipal or borehole sources.

In addition, a mobile solution has been developed to provide purified drinking water at various locations and for large-scale events with applications in the film, mining and construction industries, where on-site water purification is required.