Demotech

Making water and sanitation available in poor countries is a problem massive in size and urgency, hundreds of millions of units are necessary right now.
Only Gandhi's solution -self-reliance- can provide this, and this with the means of the poor only. If the billions of rural poor only have a bush knife as tool, then the water pump they may need should be made with only that bush knife and resources available to them.

If these billions of rural poor would be motivated by the quality of an adequate design made available to them they would put this information to practice.

How with such limited means crucial quality can be achieved is mission and task of Foundation "Demotech, design for self-reliance". Demotech finds such solutions by tenacious research in its laboratory and during field work, Experience gained is shared with for whom it matters in its website, video-reporting and published papers.

The Demotech Rope Pump design from 1975, first field tested in 1976 in Burkina Faso, embodied many of the required qualities for unsupported self-sustained use at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Demotech and others have reported where, when and how this happened.
Popularity of the Rope Pump design induced some NGO's to partly subsidized providing of this water pump, often with a more centralized manufacture with industrial means. In practice this led to the same failure of other industrial produced hand pumps due to difficulty to maintain and find spare parts while numbers of pumps realized where a fraction of set targets.

On our website you will find many projects that are designed with a similar approach. Examples are, Hydraulic Rampumps, Furniture, Administration system, Sanitation, Transport, Engineering for the Bottom of the Pyramid work shops, etc.

Again Demotech sees it as its task to generate, field test and publish a design for a hand driven water pump that fulfills all criteria for rapid self-reliant and self-sustained application required for reaching Millennium Development Goals. Design targets are set higher then in 1975. Functional performance to be equal or better then existing hand pumps to depth of 70 meters. Cost within the reach of the extreme poor (<1$/p/day). Made with local materials and tools only, according to local craft practice. Self-explaining setup and construction limits need for training to demonstration and peer-to-peer spread of knowledge.

Bench marks of success will be immediate un-invited, un-subsidized copying of the water pump where demonstrated and needed. A bench mark that takes more time to set is development of income generation by manufacture and local selling of the rope pump. A third bench mark is the occurrence of change in life-style because of easier access to water.

Re-design is Demotech's job. Demotech explores and puts to practice the possibilities of a different approach to development, which takes into account the social construction of technology and critically deals with the process of their innovation and implementation. Demotech treats people as creators of development and active collaborators in the process of shaping technology.

All the work that it takes to realize such bench marks describes best how our organization Demotech functions and performs: all but easy going!