Over the last month I’ve been working with Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) in Lilongwe, Malawi. I’ve been continuing with my work from last summer, which I also spent working for EWB in Malawi. This time, I’m placed at the local NGO Basic Services Development Agency (BASEDA) looking into issues surrounding water point functionality, and the systems that have been developed in an attempt to tackle them. Something that I’ve been running into over the last month is the huge number of well intentioned Northerners in Malawi (or back in their own countries) attempting to design solutions to the complex problems faced in rural sub-Saharan Africa.
One of the most common myths among people interested in development, especially engineers living in the North, is that there is a “silver bullet” solution to address each development hurdle. For engineers this silver bullet usually takes the form of some technical innovation that, at first glance, appears to be a solution that perfectly addresses the problem. However, the issue of human development is incredibly complex, including many problems that do not have widely replicable, one-time interventions. Take for example the Play Pump, a technology that gained enormous publicity (and funding) in recent years. The Play Pump is a merry-go-round that raises water from aquifers in the ground as children expend energy spinning around. The water is piped to an above ground tank which has advertising placed on it in order to raise funds for maintaining the pump and water is readily available whenever it is needed. The Play Pump satisfies a large number of criteria for an appropriate development intervention: a onetime installation of infrastructure, its use of children’s playing movements is innovative and marketable, it was developed in South Africa (homegrown solutions tend to equate to appropriate solutions in the minds of many people), and the use of advertising on the storage tank gives the impression of sustainability. Like most technical silver bullets, however, the Play Pump misses the mark. The first assumption that the inventors of the Play Pump made was that the issue with water access in sub-Saharan Africa is one of effort – that if it weren’t so much work to use a traditional hand pump, access to potable water wouldn’t be an issue. The reality, however, is that the twenty minutes of work required to raise a family’s daily water using a traditional pump is rarely even an issue. More important are the economies of scale to support private sector repair services and spare parts supply chains for when pumps break down, inequitable placement of infrastructure, and the prescription of inappropriate technologies. The list of missteps made in the development of the Play Pump go on: prescription of a complex technology that requires specialist maintenance, a design that satisfies the desire of donors to provide toys for children but overlooks whether or not children are even interested, and an estimate of a community’s water access needs that is wildly out of whack with reality.
The Play Pump, though one of the most visible and talked about failures of the appropriate technology movement, is by no means the worst or the last. Northern donors and the public at large (not just engineers!) love the silver bullet technical solution. These are easy to understand, as they appear to address a problem at the surface while ignoring the complexity that lies beneath. A onetime installation of infrastructure is also easy to fundraise for, as there appears to be a direct impact and the reasonable cost can be covered by an individual or a small group. Most importantly it satisfies the need of people living in the North to apply their technical expertise to the problems of those less fortunate, inevitably resulting in a technical solution to an economic, social, or cultural problem.
The tragedy of the application of technical fixes to non-technical problems is that failure is often ignored, or if recognized, is often seen as being “good enough”. People believe that the Canadian engineer developing an improved cook stove, though misguided, has his or her heart in the right place, and so should be commended for trying to make a difference. However, try relating this attitude to your last coop job. Imagine if you had decided to design a groundbreaking new product that takes advantage of all the latest breakthroughs in your particular field. However, the product is too expensive for anyone to purchase, attempts to replace already established and effective technologies, and requires inputs that are impossible or infeasible for people to acquire. You’d be out on your ear pretty quick!
In Canada we recognize that technical silver bullets don’t exist for the problems we are trying to grapple with. In developing countries, we tend to believe that because the problems seem very basic to us (like getting people access to potable drinking water) our immense technical expertise can obviously mend the situation. This is not the case. It is our responsibility as Canadians, and as global engineers, to apply the same rigor and analysis to understanding and helping to address the issues being faced in the developing world.
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