2021 Reflections

As I look back on 2021, I think one of the greatest reflections I had was in the philosophical clarity that sets Water4’s approach apart from that of many others in our space. I'm going to riff on some unrefined deep thinking here, so grab a glass of wine and 7 minutes with me to go deep in our approach. And as always, please engage with me on this thought leadership journey.

If you watched my TEDx, you know I believe our philosophy stems from a deep belief in the potential of rural Africans. Rural individuals are constantly taking the resources they have and leveraging them against the perpetual obstacles they face for personal and communal advancement. I believe that if we prioritize their wants, really believing these wants are aligned with their needs, and obsessing over their experience as clients is how sustainability will be achieved. If we can find a way to give tenacious and resilient people what they ask for, they’ll find a way to support it and make more of it.

No approach at any scale will reverse the deep failings and entropy in the water sector if we continue to put engineering and donor perception above the individual customer experience. The sector's obsession with “gadgetry” has ignored the social drivers necessarily captured in the marketplace.

Massive and catastrophic entropy is what we face, with 35-75% of water systems broken at any one time in Africa and the opposite of entropy in any context is continuous growth. Continuous growth in the context of water businesses is ever increasing profit. Obsessing over the client experience is the only way we achieve the expansion of profit and therefore solve such a massive problem. When profit is linked to customer satisfaction, it isn’t a dirty word, it’s a virtuous one.

This consumer-first equation has always operated in the background of NUMA: an aspirational, convenient, affordable piped water system that was designed around the affordability criteria of rural clients earning $1.50-$2 a day. We strive to give rural clients what they say they want (convenience, price, taste, aspiration) in order to provide what we observe they need (safe water to enable health). This requires resisting the urge to dictate what their wants should be, the thing that has resulted in the onslaught of “good enough” or “better than what they had” solutions.

A social business, as I would define it, is the intersection of clients' subjective wants with a product that meets objective needs. This “client first”, social, profit centered mission is what is enabling Water4 to bring 21st century water solutions to rural Africa.

For too long people in rural contexts have been viewed as “backwards” and this perspective is the only rationale I can imagine for the backwards solutions we’ve entertained in the nonprofit world. It has created a total lack of imagination in regards to what solutions we’ve proposed, namely because we’ve ignored their wants-- providing instead what we deemed were their needs.

A decade ago I had communities in Togo bemoaning that I’d installed hand pumps instead of piped water taps in the most remote, isolated places. It was disorienting to me at the time and I remember feeling like it stemmed from ingratitude. WIth time I realized that feeling came from the unhealthy relationship of a benefactor/beneficiary mindset I was holding onto that was in conflict with our earliest business model, which required relatively significant community payments for the hand pump. That requirement of payment changed the way these rural individuals saw themselves, prompting them to tell me what they wanted--differentiated from what I thought they needed. They started complaining about what was being “given” to them…which was the best signal I was onto something with asking for payment…it was reciprocity, ownership, dignity…even if I didn’t know it yet.

When rural Africans see themselves as clients rather than beneficiaries of charity, you suddenly learn what they want and what they’re willing to pay for, and most importantly you suddenly learn what they’re able to pay for.

Giving rural Africans, who are naturally and socially entrepreneurial, solutions that they want opens up huge opportunities, as they creatively envision and discover ways to profit from solutions above and beyond the price they pay for a product.

In my interviews with NUMA clients, I’ve learned that convenance, their stated priority, is catalytic in that they no longer have to use time to fetch water that could be used for income generation, time that became a risk/reward trade off for seeking out safe water options over unsafe more proximate options, as well as offsetting the common practice of hiring children or others to haul water in able to monetize time for productive use.

Indeed, we’re seeing a boon of people in Ghana willing to pay 12.5% more for piped water directly to their homes. They are using that added convenance to mass produce food (which can be bagged and stored for resale when for twice as long when made with NUMA water since it doesn't spoil due to bacteria) and even facilitate the construction of small guest rooms which are then leased out to tenants (both the savings on construction over hauling water by hand and the benefit of passive income from tenants gained by having piped water). They've taken a 12.5% fee and made it into a gainful personal and profitable enterprise. Our fear of inequity and projection of their needs has been, perhaps, one of the greatest inhibitors to their economic development and gain.

Every rural African I have met is highly sophisticated in their financial and entrepreneurial thinking—calculating to the fractional-penny the costs of commodities and labor due to the scarcity of resources they are challenged with managing. There’s no pulling the wool over their eyes when invited/asked to participate financially in a philanthropically intended solution. Indeed, ultimately it is our philanthropic intentions that have resulted in our failures in that our intentions took precedence over a curiosity towards "the wants" of the rural African—"wants" that were anchored in their realities and individual and entrepreneurial agency as humans created in the image of God.

Our focus, as benefactors, was on financial costs per person, health impacts, and simplistic technology that imagined or romanticized the materially simplistic way of life in rural contexts rather than envisioning the potential modernization that could come from the nexus of technology and the rural consumers desires.

Water4, by placing the rural African’s wants and experiences as central to our operational model, is unlocking the future with a safe water product that is modern, convenient, cost appropriate, and health generating. Giving the consumer what they want, the businesses are given what they need, revenue and profit for growth, employment, and greater expansion. The starkly “different’ look and feel of NUMA water services will undoubtedly unlock greater creativity for what can be provided, profitably, if this massive consumer base is engaged creatively.

Water4’s quantum leap came, ironically, by placing our good intentions in the backseat to the stated desires of rural Africans, trusting that they would know best what to do with what resources they asked for, and therefore displacing the typical paternalism of the non-profit/NGO approach.

Business is the only thing that unlocks this type of reciprocity, in that the exchange of money for a service depends on meeting the wants of the client, and in our context, trusting that the clients “wants” would align to their needs instead of assuming we “knew best.”

What has emerged from Water4’s passion for operational growth is a 21st century water solution for rural Africa, not the 18th century hand pump, rain catchment, or open well so typical of water charities. Dirty, yellow jerry cans are not the future. Safe water, beautifully delivered at home, is.

That's what people in rural Africa want, and because they want it, they will help us make it happen by supporting the businesses that provide it.

It will only require continuous charitable support if we continue to give people what we think they need rather than listening to what they say they need.

Business and profit, whenever possible, stand as the highest form of virtue in philanthropic development because it is the truest form of equitable and reciprocal exchange. At the retail counter, the business and client see each other eye to eye. This approach, posed with curiosity and imagination, I believe is what can eradicate much of poverty and bring greater prosperity to the world.

I’m so grateful for the Board of Directors of Water4, who have helped me lead Water4 into these discoveries and have empowered me to remain curious and open to innovation. It is a truly unique opportunity to lead an organization with such a culture and because of it, we're seeing spiritual, entrepreneurial, and physical prosperity blossom all around.