Pump It Up
This is Paul Butler’s third post on his trip to Mali.
While in Mali, Dale and I were itching to see KickStart’s Super-MoneyMaker treadle pump in action. We had seen one in the corner of their San Francisco office and had heard about it from several trusted sources, including Kevin Starr at Mulago Foundation.
KickStart is an impressive group and about the same size as Rare. Like our own organization, it too is a multi-year winner of Fast Company’s Social Capitalist Award. KickStart’s forte is selling inexpensive technologies, such as irrigation pumps and hay balers, to farmers in poor communities in sub-Saharan Africa who want to start, or improve, their own small-scale businesses. Their biggest seller is the Super-MoneyMaker foot-driven treadle pump, which raises (on average) a farm’s income from $110 to $1,100 annually.
Treadle pumps have several advantages over motorized pumps for irrigating small plots of agricultural land. First, they are considerably less expensive to purchase than motorized pumps, and secondly they cost much less to operate — having no fuel and only limited repair and maintenance costs. Treadle pumps utilize a person’s body weight and leg muscles in an easy walking motion, such that usage can be sustained for extended periods of time without tiring. The treadle pump is also much less exhausting to use than other manual pumps which are “powered” by a person’s upper body and relatively weak arm muscles.
Today, across Kenya, and now Mali, thousands use KickStart’s pumps to draw water from hand-dug wells, rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. It is ideal for sprinkler irrigation, filling overhead water tanks, or for use with nozzles and sprays attached to the end of the delivery hose. The MoneyMaker can draw water up from 23 feet (7m) and has a total pumping head of 46 feet (14m). It can be used to irrigate up to two acres of land.
Accompanied by KickStart’s Mali point person, Ryan Roberge, Dale and I visited distributors and satisfied customers. Ryan, a former Peace Corps volunteer, amazed us with his fluency in the local Bambara language, and his clear love of all things Malian, as well as his commitment to KickStart and the group’s philosophy. His goal is to develop a nationwide distributorship for the pumps, making them available to farmers cultivating small market garden plots, as well as for those interested in launching small tree nurseries or involved in agro-forestry. The pump itself is simple, durable, and comparatively inexpensive.
We visited one small plot outside Mopti alongside Mali’s Niger River and accompanied a farmer across his neatly divided plot to witness the MoneyMaker in action. The farmer pointed out, with evident pride, just how easy the pump was to use and motioned for Dale and me to try it and see for ourselves. He then dug his hand into the soft soil and pulled out the largest carrot I had ever seen. Irrigated with water drawn by the pump from a nearby well, and fertilized with a generous dose of cow manure, the farmer dusted off his proffered gift and urged us “to take a bite”!
When asked about increased productivity and cost benefits, the farmer proudly exclaimed that “the pump was worth much more than I paid for it,” and that he had indeed been able to cultivate more land, at greater levels of productivity for more months, than he would have been able to do without it.
Ryan obviously took much pride in these revelations and had an almost “I told you so” grin on his face, but perhaps that grin was more the result of watching Dale and me consume the carrots while at the same time avoiding the specks of soil and manure on them.
If technologies like KickStart’s pumps can indeed increase productivity and incomes, how might they be used to reduce environmental threats like deforestation?