US company unveils borehole drilling technology to bridge water supply gap in rural Kenya

To help bridge the gap in water supply in rural areas in Kenya, a US-based company has unveiled a new borehole drilling technology.

Transcript

00:00The unveiling of the new village drill hybrid is a human powered and electric powered borehole drilling machine

00:07Capable of drilling boreholes 50 60 70 meters deep in almost every substrate

00:13The two great advantages to the village drill over the current technology

00:17The two great advantages are one it can drill in almost any location

00:22It can go across the swamp. It can go up a mountain. You can carry it to your Chamba

00:27It can drill at almost any location and most importantly it can drill for a

00:32Fraction of the cost of a big rig drilling truck. We're very excited to announce this new technology

00:38We're very excited to partner with a county of Cosumo

00:41We have the county of Cosumo here who has just today at our meeting announced the purchase of ten village drill hybrid units

00:48This will allow the county to drill ten times the number of boreholes that they're currently drilling with their one big rig truck

00:55We are not doing very well

00:57So this is something which you know talking of a countywide coverage of that 72 percent

01:02The city is good at 92, but now with the rural areas, that's where we have the gap

01:07So this is a gap which we we really feel that when we can really do it in terms of ground water access

01:14so this is something which we are seeing like in the larger part of

01:18the county places like

01:21You know when you talk about that depth this is like

01:24Moroni, Nyando and Seme we can actually access in that area and with this if we can have that and

01:32It's we have already talked as a department and thinking that if you can have this and this is a pre-order

01:39This is something which you can be financed by the county government. So of course

01:44Executive Assembly and of course we have partners here. With this technology that we are seeing

01:49we are looking at forward to increased production because

01:53Historically what a sector trust fund mandate is financing the counties in terms of giving conditional and unconditional

02:00Grants and the main challenge has always been

02:04Not having adequate sources for development

02:07So with this kind of technology that we are seeing here having more boreholes to be drilled in most of these areas that we also

02:14Target we look forward to more development to cover the deficits in terms of coverage

02:20Which is 28% from the WSREP report