Humanitas Global Development Blog

The Hippo Roller: A Solution for Time Poverty Among Women in Rural Africa

By Nicole Graham, Humanitas Global

For years, the “Hippo Roller” Water Project has been gaining attention on the internet. It has been seen in viral videos on Facebook and YouTube, featured in news articles around the world, and even endorsed by Nelson Mandela as a local project with promise.

The Hippo Roller was created in 1991 by Pettie Petzer and Johan Jonker, two South African men who grew up on farms experiencing the national water crisis first-hand. With roots in a water-dependent, resource poor environment, the creators are familiar with the struggle to access water that millions of Africans are currently experiencing.

The concept is simple: An easier, more efficient way to collect water. The product reflects that simple concept: A large drum that can carry 90 liters of water is fitted with a “utility cap”, which filters and cleans the water as it enters the drum. It is then attached to a large steel handle, allowing the drum to be rolled across the ground, similar to a wheelbarrow. Promotional videos provided by Hippo Roller show women, men, and even toddlers rolling full drums across the ground with ease.

Hippo Rollers in action

At 26 years old, Emily Pilloton founded the non-profit Project H Design, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to investing in youth to serve as builders, innovators and creators. The volunteer design firm focuses on issues addressing: Humanity, Habitats, Health and Happiness. When introduced to the Hippo Roller, Pilloton and Project H’s first initiative became a plan to fund and deliver 75 Hippo Rollers to Kgautswane, South Africa.

According to the Hippo Roller’s website 45,000 Hippo Rollers have been distributed, alleviating challenges to water access for up to 300,000 people by transporting 7 billion liters of water. Although the Hippo Rollers had a  significant impact on the community, on her first trip to South Africa, Pilloton quickly realized that the Rollers could be improved. There were design flaws and the product was difficult to ship in bulk. The Rollers themselves cost only $35, and yet shipping two-thousand to Angola, for instance, cost nearly $30,000.

With the help of Engineers without Borders, Project H introduced a revamped and sturdier Hippo Roller despite experiencing many obstacles, including the loss of funding. Pilloton carefully documented the experience so that other innovators can learn from the process, and bypass some of the same obstacles.

Why it Matters

Of the 783 million people who do not have access to safe drinking water, 37 percent reside in sub-Saharan Africa.

Recently, science journal PLOS One published a study using data amassed in 24 African countries to indicate definitively that women and children spend more than half an hour every day fetching water. This task is grueling, but labeled as a “low status job” and disproportionately falls on young women. Of the children surveyed collecting water, 62 percent were girls. Long walks to retrieve water can cause health risks, be punctuated by violence, and often prevents young women from pursuing schooling or jobs.

Carrying heavy loads of water so frequently leads to musculoskeletal damage and early degeneration of bones and tissue. A gallon of water weighs eight pounds, and most women carry five gallons a day. These 45 pounds cause headaches, issues with childbirth, and unnatural spine curvature.

© The Nature Conservancy

Waterborne diseases are also more easily contracted, such as worm infections.  Jay Graham, researcher of the PLOS One report, found that with a five minute decrease in water collection time, which could be facilitated by the Hippo Roller, there was a 14 percent drop in diarrhea risks and a higher body weight score for children under five years old.

Daily water retrieval is highly inefficient. A study in Kenya found that retrieving water costs approximately $20 per month, more than the average water bill in the United States. This money goes towards fees paid to water vendors, the treatment of diarrhea and other waterborne diseases,  

By addressing the difficulty of retrieving water, the Hippo Roller can improve health, sanitation and even time poverty in many African countries. Upwards of five times the amount of water that can be carried on an individual’s head can fit into the Hippo Roller, reducing the amount of time girls or women spend gathering water. The African invention would free up time for women and children to attend school, hold a job, complete household tasks more efficiently and dedicate time to food production. With five times more water at their disposal, the Hippo Roller improves water access, nutrition, health and income generation.

Within the same vein, other organizations are attempting to address Africa’s time poverty issue. Partners for Care and packH2O have changed lives by distributing water transportation backpacks in East Africa. Unlike a standard water backpack used for hiking, the packH2O can hold up to twenty liters of water. While fitted like a backpack, it also has arm straps to alleviate the weight distribution of the water.

This innovation, along with Hippo Roller, addresses a necessary market. Many creative and increasingly cheap options are available to purify water, but time poverty and transport have remained largely unaddressed. The Hippo Roller is now widely recognized as an acceptable product in Africa, and has spread rapidly. With its continued success, women and children will be able to spend more time towards their own sustainable futures with schooling and jobs.

Addressing the Development Gaps in TB Diagnostics and Treatment: Where We Need To Go

By Obaid Khan, Humanitas Global

There is a pivotal shift in the way epidemic of tuberculosis is approached today. As the disease burden has mostly afflicted the resource-constrained low and middle income countries in recent years, the market dynamics have also transformed. In this follow-up blog post, we will explore the implications this has for investment and development in TB research and development (R&D), diagnostics and treatment tools.

As the airborne infectious disease of TB continues rapid transmission throughout the global community, the innovations in diagnosis and treatment are not in consonance with the transmission rates in high burden countries. The underlying reasons for these development gaps need to be explored. Advocacy and activism can be instrumental in highlighting the slow progress in TB control. However, advocacy needs to work with a deeper understanding of the concurrent reasons below par efforts against TB transmission exist.

Comprehending the lack of investment for TB R&D can result in useful insights to the nature of stumbling blocks. These obstructions hamper the initiation and implementation of innovations for low-resource settings in particular. An interesting trend that can be derived from the TB R&D funding is the crowding out of private sector funding by philanthropic funding. The drop in private sector funding can be traced to Pfizer’s exit from TB R&D in 2012. In retrospect, this move was telling about the low profitability for the pharmaceutical industry’s investment in research for TB drug development. Pfizer’s strategy resonated with other players in the market as Astra Zeneca and Novartis also halted TB R&D. These structural changes in the pharmaceutical industry reflect the low returns on investments expected from low and middle income country markets.  From a humanitarian perspective, industries should keep investing in TB to develop effective, low cost solutions regardless of profits. However, the private sector’s sustainability is embedded in its profitability. But, to address the issue at hand, there is a need to realize that a market failure hampers the progress in the TB innovations frontier. Focusing on this evaluative space can help to design comprehensive market interventions to reinvigorate industrial investment in TB diagnostics and treatment innovations that meet the needs of those afflicted.

Market interventions must take a multi-pronged approached to contextualize the varying nature of market failures in high-TB burden countries. Middle-income high burden countries, like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, can lead the way in employing market-based solutions. These countries can benefit from introducing a market intervention that aims to foster affordable solutions to curb TB and its transmission effectively. There is potential to encourage generic manufacturing for anti-TB drugs and implementing policies that promote the innovations cycle. Multinational corporations, donors and multilateral organizations can collaborate to support the innovators and manufacturers in these emerging economies. These interventions can be categorized as ‘facilitating’ mechanisms that help the host country in strengthening the health systems. Bolstering clinical trial capacity and other relevant facets can expedite the development of affordable diagnosis, treatment and other drugs.

Multilateral and philanthropic organizations need to collaborate with the legislators to disrupt the standing structure of the sub-optimal systems and practices. There are notable examples where UN programs, such as UNICEF and WHO, have partnered with other organizations to invigorate innovative solutions in healthcare in developing countries. These consortiums of donors, like Stop TB Partnership and GAVI Alliance, employ forward pricing agreements for the diffusion of innovations. One such example is that of Stop TB Partnership, particularly the TBXpert Initiative, which aims to facilitate the diffusion of health innovations in high TB burden developing countries. The program, funded by UNITAID and WHO, and managed by Stop TB Partnership, focuses on the procurement and uptake of rapid tuberculosis diagnostic test called GeneXpert. GeneXpert systems and cartridges are procured by the consortium of aforementioned partners from the manufacturer, Cepheid, at a discounted price in exchange of guaranteed market in high burden countries. The broad market mechanism to incentivize innovators was envisioned by Michael Kremer in the following words, "Pull programs reward research outputs, for example, by committing in advance to purchase a specified amount of a desired product at a specified price”.

GAVI Alliance utilizes similar market mechanisms, as Stop TB Partnership, to address the market failures in the provision of underused and new vaccines in poor countries. The Alliance comprises of Gates Foundation, UNICEF, World Bank and WHO. Forward pricing agreements are employed to incentivize the manufacturers for free provision of rotavirus, pneumococcal and pentavalent vaccines in poor countries. From 2010 to 2015, GAVI Alliance has been able to exceed the targets in terms of number of countries receiving the aforementioned vaccines. This market intervention has improved vaccine coverage rates in the GAVI eligible countries considerably. However, concerted efforts are required to reach the pre-determined targets.

As the world has become a global village, various global partnerships have emerged and there have been concerted efforts for diffusion of innovations. Development discourse and practice has transformed from a paternalistic aid paradigm to one of mutual partnerships for sustainable solutions. Stop TB partnership is an example of one of the partnerships that aim to improve TB outcomes in the disease afflicted resource-constrained countries. Innovative market interventions, complemented by adaptive implementation policies, can prove to be a great leap forward in eradicating the epidemic of tuberculosis.