MapWASH

In Kenya, over 40% of the population lack access to basic water and sanitation facilities. Yet, there is little to no centralized data showing distribution of existing water infrastructure. This data vacuum is greatly hampering COVID-19 rapid response efforts especially, deploying hand-washing stations. Consequently, over-duplication is rising while other highly vulnerable areas are neglected. 

MapWASH, is a solution that helps rapid response teams in quickly mapping daily usage tracking of all deployed hand-washing stations for efficient data-driven efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19.
MapWASH uses a basic smartphone to collect GPS location and daily usage at a station. Maps of all stations are generated and analyzed to draw insights on trend patterns.

With MapWASH we ensure that no community is left behind! By providing key empirical insights on impact coverage of interventions, we allow for data-driven course-correcting to optimally serve as many people as possible, as sustainably as possible.

Lack of centralized data showing distribution of water infrastructure is currently greatly hampering COVID-19 response efforts of the government and organizations especially deploying hand-washing stations across the country. 

As a result, over-duplication is rising in areas perceived to be high risk while neglecting other equally vulnerable since there is little coverage tracking or evaluation. 

Ensuring the well-being of communities during this pandemic is impossible without sustainable, equitable access to water and sanitation. Yet, over 40% of the population in Kenya lack access to basic water and sanitation facilities, and on average receive less than 10 water supply hours in a day at best, with frequent water rationing amidst the pandemic. 

It is, therefore, crucial to map out exactly existing stations are located, then empirically determine exactly where more handwashing stations need be set up to ensure 100% pandemic response coverage and no community is left behind.

Thus, to effectively sustain this effort, it is crucial to track and quantify the impact of handwashing, as a key behaviour change in the fight against COVID-19. Additionally, since handwashing is the most effective single measure to reduce the spread of 80% infections, it will be prudent to sustain all handwashing stations post COVID-19.

MapWASH is a software tool that helps response teams in the fast mapping, daily usage tracking and evaluation of all deployed handwashing stations for an efficient data-driven way to help curb the spread of COVID-19.

MapWASH uses a mobile phone as the primary tool for data collection i.e. GPS location and the daily usage of the handwashing station. All data is stored securely on the cloud. MapWASH uses location data to generate maps of all deployed stations and interventions. Usage data is analyzed based on demographics, health and location data to draw insights on trend patterns. 

Correlations are drawn with to quantify station performance, community buy-in and behavioral change that are critical to planning interventions and course-correcting.All these insights are visually presented as heat maps or as statistics and charts and published on a central web portal. Here, anyone can view any information, filtered by area, sub county or county. This is made available either for internal use or open public access. 

MapWASH makes it easy for organizations to empirically quantify the status, usage and most importantly, the impact of their interventions to ensure that they are fulfilling their mandate, have maximum community reach while being sustainable.

We target stakeholders in the water and sanitation sector like government agencies, water utilities, development organizations and NGOs leading response efforts. 

By providing critical insights, MapWASH helps these stakeholders ensure that no community is left behind in their respective service areas that reach millions of Kenyan families. This is critical especially in urban informal settlements that are densely populated and with very limited access to affordable clean water and sanitation.  

We work closely with our partners during development to iteratively improve MapWASH. Our current partners include, Rotary International District 9212 - has a country wide deployment of water programmes, The National Business Compact Kenya - a consortium of major organizations in the private sector collaborating with the public sector, and 3 major water utilities. We iteratively incorporate feedback that we receive from our partners live from 146 regions spread over 25 counties in Kenya. 

MapWASH helps our partners visualize and rapidly optimize the impact of their interventions while reaching as many people as possible in previously underserved areas. This has seen record acceptability and adherence to best hand-washing practices against COVID-19 en masse in all deployed areas, becoming easier to justify more investment. 

Lack of adequate response coverage tracking is hampering efforts to successfully eradicate COVID-19.

To help mitigate the spread or a resurgence of a new wave, it is important to ensure that there is 100% response coverage and that no community is left behind. 

MapWASH main focus is to give partners critical empirical insights to help inform key decisions that support and protect all our communities.

Since handwashing is the most effective single measure to reduce the spread of 80% infections, it will be prudent to sustain all handwashing stations post COVID-19 as a first line of defence against future outbreaks. 

Whilst monitoring and evaluation tools for water and sanitation interventions exist, many only exist as a framework whose implementation is upto the discretion of an organization. Meaning evaluation data is fragmented per organization making it difficult to mount a joint multi-agency effort to fight against a pandemic. 

MapWASH uses a crowd sourced data collection method but on an organization level, which is game changer for accelerating joint multi-agency interventions. This is made available either for internal organizational use or open public access. 

All evaluation data from every organization is aggregated in a central platform that assists key decision makers in making critical high level decisions during a pandemic. Here, anyone can access any information, filtered by area, sub county or county. This type of platform is currently non-existent across distributors of other evaluation tools. 

MapWASH is a software suite with a native mobile application, USSD for primary data collection at hand-washing stations and a cloud-based web application for analytics and visualizations. All data collected is stored securely in the cloud. 

For daily usage tracking, each station manager can either use a physical tally sheet, then simply SMS total tallies at the end of the day to a dedicated MapWASH short SMS code, or use the mobile app on a smart phone send data in realtime. All administrative users can perform read write tasks on visualizations and analytics using the web-based dashboard. 

MapWASH's ecosystem utilizes standard web protocols and a native mobile application that also relies on USSD. Twilio, SMS, and Safaricom's M-PESA are widely used and are proven technologies that enable people to communicate and even send money to each other without any internet. Whenever a station manager send the total tally count to our MapWASH short SMS code, the tally is automatically sent to the cloud and is available and accessible anywhere on the MapWASH platform. 

Our work is underpinned by the belief that achieving the goal of a middle-income Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa begins with 100% equitable dignified access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for everyone. 

Ensuring the well-being of communities during a pandemic is impossible without accessible WASH in urban formal and informal settlements. This is supported by a study by the World Bank that demonstrates that WASH interventions are among the most essential to prevent disease and protect health during infectious disease outbreaks. Furthermore, it will be prudent to sustain all handwashing efforts since it is single most effective measure to reduce the spread of 80% infections.

Little to no centralized data on current water access coverage is derailing efforts to accelerate access to WASH, in the wake of the COVID-19. 

We believe that collaboration using public-private partnerships is very valuable. When joint institutional efforts are coordinated effectively, they will quickly accelerate WASH access to 100%.  

MapWASH is specifically designed to fill this gap and help organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa map, monitor and empirically quantify their WASH interventions to rapidly accelerate access. 

Activities/Inputs: We provide easy to use mapping, monitoring and data-driven evaluation software tools for WASH interventions.

Outputs:  Partners receive key performance indicators: number of interventions / handwashing stations deployed, coverage vis a vis population population distribution, total people served, trends, number of verifiable handwashes overtime and amount of used water and soap supplies or required at any given time. 

Outcomes: Quicker access to contextualized usage index reports leads to maximum reach and impact of WASH interventions. Cost index reports compared against deficits required to achieve 100% WASH access, provide critical insights on operational costs and sustainability of interventions.

Impact: Better access to affordable and dignified access to WASH to a better better quality of life for everyone, regardless socio-economic class.

Improved hygiene and health outcomes in communities reached due to positive behaviour change of behaviour towards better hygiene practices. 

During pandemics, partners are able to efficiently respond to the needs of their communities in real-time as they emerge, and prepare accordingly for any future pandemics.

Since March 2020, MapWASH has built network of partnershing with award winning impactful organizations helping accelerating access to WASH in Kenya, including Rotary International D9212, SHOFCO and the National Business Compact on COVID-19 (N.B.C.C.), a consortium of organizations in the private sector partnering with the public sector and major water utilities. 

Thus far, MapWASH is currently deployed at 1290 hand-washing stations spanning 25 counties directly serving about 3 Million people. We have tracked and recorded a total of 4,308,792* hand-washes, 1,292,637* litres of water and 21,536* liters of liquid soap with a daily average usage of 915 hand-washes per station.

By the end of 2020, we aim to be active in all WASH stations of all 9 member organizations of the N.B.C.C and partner with the Ministry of Health leading to a direct reach of about 10 million people. As we expand, by 2025, we hope be active in most if not all WASH stations in Kenya, reaching about 40 million people.

*Source: MapWASH, Date retrieved: 18th June, 2020. 

*Water and soap supplies used to serve 4,308,792 vulnerable children, young men and women in informal communities in Kenya so far. 

This year, we plan to target organizations with deployed WASH interventions or with community water programmes. 

By Q4 2020, we are targeting 8 major organizations with countrywide WASH deployments through N.C.C.B. We are also targeting 3 individual county government health departments to help Ministry of Health help streamline their own monitoring and evaluation at a county level. 

By 2022, we see MapWASH as the main tool for quantify impact of intervention, monitoring and evaluation for all WASH interventions in Kenya and subsequently East Africa.  

By 2025, we see MapWASH with Sub-Saharan Africa a wide network of partners, with a centralized WASH data coverage repository, working jointly to rapidly accelerate 100% access the 600 million Africans currently living in water resource stressed areas with limited WASH infrastructure, surviving on less that $5 a day. 

The main barriers we are so far facing are cultural and financial. Culturally, we are facing barriers to entry with partnerships with some organizations due to some boardroom politics, where some officials that are implicitly biased against home-grown solutions developed by local teams. Informally, there is a notion that Western or European based international development firms, or consultancies are best equipped to carry out large-scale monitoring and evaluation for development projects. 

Financially, it takes a long time before invoices are completed by some organisations and government agencies because of long procurement cycles, which sometimes cause some hiccups on our bottom lines on running costs. While we are working at full capacity to maximize operations and strategic decisions for full market penetration, we are concerned that this may limit our growth. 

To ensure better confidence in our MapWASH offerings and our team's capabilities, we are taking the time to build intentional relationships with prospecting partner organizations while better showcasing our successes with current partners. 

To ensure that we are able to sustain internal operations, we have put measures in place to evaluate the payment risk and ensure that partners follow through on agreed upon timelines in our MoU. We've already created this framework and currently rolling it out. 

Full Time: 4

Part Time: 5

MapWASH was founded by a team with strong professionals with over 10 years of combined multidisciplinary expertise in the technology, water and sanitation space. 

We are extremely proud that our team is all Kenyan. We are very passionate about problem solving, uniquely qualified with skin in the game since we are personally equally affected. Ultimately, we are invested in helping change the African narrative. 

Here are profiles of the core team:

Denis Sigei, Co-founder & CEO: 

Denis is an Environmental Engineer by training with specialization in Water and Sanitation. He has over 6 year experience as WASH Professional working with both local and international organizations as a lead design engineer on circular economy pioneer projects in water and sanitation. 

Shimanyi Valentino, Co-founder & CTO:

Shimanyi is an experienced Software Engineer with extensive knowledge in computing principles. He brings leadership, drive and over 8 years of experience in designing and developing global-scale software systems with international clients such UNICEF and World Vision in his portfolio.

Dorcas Kareithi, Data Analysis & Visualization Lead:

Dorcas is an analyst with over 5 years’ experience assessing projects across various health and development topics. She has a keen eye for spotting patterns and can turn seemingly complicated data into useful insights. She describes herself as quantitatively curious.

Ken Ruto, Partnerships & Communications Lead:

Ken has a Computer Science and Business Administration background with Communications. Ken brings a unique approach to design thinking, intuitive product design with a focus on resource mobilization, partnership building and external communications. 

We are currently partnered with Rotary International D9212, SHOFO, National Business Compact on Coronavirus and three major water utilities in and outside the greater Nairobi Region. MapWASH assists all our partners in empirically quantifying the impact of all their deployed hand-washing stations during the COVID-19 pandemic for sustainability. 

Our business model is primarily Software as a Service. We have different tiered pricing models, with the most basic being a freemium, where organizations can try a limited version with limited tracking and analytics features. Our business model is mainly B2B targeting organizations or agencies. Other alternative sources of revenue include WASH consultancy and insight reports.

Our main revenue comes from cash flow generated from software subscriptions. Once we are able to break even on running operational costs and scaling costs, we will be able to reach financial sustainability fairly quickly since our entire offering is software based. 

We continue to seek grant funding to subsidize team salaries and operation costs before we can receive payments from software subsciptions from current partners. 

We believe that MIT Solve is the perfect opportunity for us to grow and scale out MapWASH. MIT Solve will offer the perfect exposure and spotlight, being an international world renown stage, it will go a long way in helping further build more credibility to our offering and the capabilities of our team and our vision. 

We're also looking for in-kind support and contribution in software development, research and more potential partnerships with international WASH organizations aligned with our mission. As we continue to scale, we are looking for partners who can support us in building a distribution model that will work to reach the most vulnerable communites to the last mile. 

We are seeking partners at the forefront of scaling WASH interventions looking to help improve access to water and sanitation for all of Sub-Saharan Africa by the end of this decade. We will welcome help and advice in story telling and building out a distribution model that will help us get more WASH partners working together towards 100% access to all. 

We would be interested in partnering with other Solvers working in the WASH space in Sub-Saharan Africa and some Solve members including The World Bank Group, and Cisco who supports access to basic needs including WASH needs of low-income individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa  and whose tech-based data-driven approach aligns best with vision to ensure 100% access by the end of the decade.