David Mwangi has run a roadside tree and plant nursery outside of Nairobi for four years. In Kenya, you have to work around the two seasons (unlike the 4 in the West). The rainy season where everything is fine, and the dry season where your plants will likely die. This gets even worse when a drought happens.
David had the idea to dig a ditch down the side of the road and channel that into two 2-meter deep water catchments. The water is used to support the plants during the dry season and he never runs out of water, even during a drought. He has also stocked the pulls with fish (Tilapia), that he and his workers eat. A third byproduct is that the rain water being diverted doesn’t further erode that part of the road.
It’s a lesson in simplicity married with low-tech ingenuity coming together for increased business profitability.
Here’s a short video, where one of my friends translates for David:
More pictures available at the Flickr AfriGadget group.
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What if instead of giving a man a fishing rod, an entirely new tool was invented? This is what groups like Afrigadget, Architecture for Humanity, Design Matters, Teach a Man to Fish, and others are striving to achieve. Afrigadget has posted on an ingenious idea to build a 2-meter ditch down the side of a Kenyan road in order to catch water in the rainy season, irrigate crops during the dry season and harvest Tilapia in between. All of this is accomplished without further contributing to soil erosion.
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Ah hah! So they don’t hate us!! I knew it! There was nothing I found interesting in the UG papers today. But from the blogosphere, Is this true? 75% of American Businesses are single person businesses? This is also interesting, Innovative Road Side Nursery in Kenya That could easily be Uganda, we have roadside nurseries and there is tilapia in Uganda! Though I don’t know if you could raise them in gutters in Kampala? According to the PSD Blog, The Ugandan government is going to give 10$ a month to the
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can purify 4,000 - 6,000 liters with one filter, could potentially revolutionize the way fresh water is distributed to disaster areas and has already become a hot seller amongst military chiefs eager to provide better drinking water to their soldiers.Water Harvesting by Roadside Plant Nurseryfrom Afrigadget
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[...] Harvesting Afrigadget reports on Water Harvesting:Labels: agriculture, aquaculture, health, infrastructure, innovation, [...]
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31 December 1969 - 4:00 pm - :
What if instead of giving a man a fishing rod, an entirely new tool was invented? This is what groups like Afrigadget, Architecture for Humanity, Design Matters, Teach a Man to Fish, and others are striving to achieve. Afrigadget has posted on an ingenious idea to build a 2-meter ditch down the side of a Kenyan road in order to catch water in the rainy season, irrigate crops during the dry season and harvest Tilapia in between. All of this is accomplished without further contributing to soil erosion.