UNSW Sydney was proud to bring together partners in Uganda and Kenya to share technology and knowledge on water treatment systems.
UNSW Sydney was proud to bring together partners in Uganda and Kenya to share technology and knowledge on water treatment systems.
FundiFix, opens in a new window is a social enterprise working on water management in Kitui County, Kenya. Water management in Kenya is decentralised by the Kenyan constitution and localised to the county level. FundiFix works in Kitui County, opens in a new window, contributing to maintaining rural water supply in about 5 sub-counties. The organisation has offices in Kyuso village, 287 km from Nairobi city, but is expanding to other sub-counties and counties. Its mandate is professionalised rural water operation and maintenance for safe and reliable services for local communities, schools and healthcare facilities. FundiFix’s main activities include repair of waterpoint breakdowns, maintenance of infrastructure, water supply, billing and revenue collection, water quality monitoring, treatment and reporting to communities, and training of both youth and water users for capacity development on related issues. FundiFix’s services benefit more than 75,000 people in rural communities in Kenya.
UNSW Engineering has collaborated with FundiFix since 2020 on point-of-use (PoU) water treatment, supported through funding for a ‘Application of UV-LED to rural water systems’ project by the ‘REACH - Improving water security for the poor’, opens in a new window Programme. The REACH programme is led by Oxford University and brings together a consortium of global leaders in water science, policy and practice.
UNSW Engineering has collaborated with Uganda’s Gulu University (GU, opens in a new window) since 2016 and with the African STEM Education Initiative (ASEI, opens in a new window) since 2021, opens in a new window on UV-C technologies. Gulu University and ASEI have been collaborating on Point-of-Use water treatment systems using solar-powered UV-C units on rainwater tanks in remote Ugandan schools, health centres and refugee camp communities since 2020. These units shine ultra-violet light (in the C wavelength) through water as it is dispensed from a rainwater tank or existing infrastructure, treating it as it flows past and killing microbiological contaminants that make people sick.
On the 4th-6th December 2024 a workshop was held in Kitui County, Kenya to install Gulu/ASEI developed UV-C water treatment systems alongside a UNSW-designed system, developed by Dr. Gough Lui, opens in a new window from UNSW/Western Sydney University. The workshop was supported by the REACH Programme and the UNSW Faculty of Engineering’s Humanitarian Engineering, opens in a new window program.
The December 2024 workshop allowed the advancement of UV-C PoU water treatment by both Gulu, ASEI, and UNSW to be shared with the FundiFix team as part of the REACH Programme’s efforts to improve water security for over 10 million of the world’s poorest people.
Access to water in several rural areas of Kenya is still limited, with basic service standing at only 53% countrywide. Kitui County is situated in Eastern Kenya with a population of 1.2 million. Kitui is classified among the arid and semi-arid lands, which pose significant challenges to water availability. The Kitui community is considered fragile in terms of water access and water management.
Water is mainly supplied by the Kyuso raw catchment, community boreholes, private boreholes and pumped water from Kiambere Mwingi Water and Sanitation Company (KIMWASCO) or the Kitui Water and Sanitation Co. Ltd. Within FundiFix’s service area, KIMWASCO supplies water twice a week, however the supply is not regular and is often hindered by breakdowns. Further, inadequate capacity to service a rapidly growing population means that other sources of safe drinking water are urgently needed.
FundiFix operates and manages more than 30 small, piped schemes supplying water from deep boreholes, and an additional 15 handpump sources in Kitui for community water supply. Its professional services ensure breakdowns at these sources are fixed fast, providing more reliable services. Outside these water sources, local communities rely on various alternatives such as shallow wells, earth dams, sand dams, rock catchments, and rainwater harvesting, with seasonality influencing their availability. There are also seasonal rivers but are dry for most of the year except for a few days during the wet season. As a result, riverbed scooping to collect sub-surface flows is also a common practice (Figure 1).
Besides access and inadequate service, water quality is also a major challenge in Kitui. In particular, faecal contamination of water sources by animals, turbidity (Figure 2) and salinity are critical issues affecting the water quality. During the teams’ visit, water collected from the river in Kyuso was loaded with fine suspended solids that did not settle even after 24 hours of collection from the stream. Nitrate and fluoride were found to be high in various water sources from prior water testing by FundFix.
In 2023/4 FundiFix, in collaboration with UNSW, installed a UVC water treatment system designed by Dr. Gough Lui and the Humanitarian Engineering program at UNSW at the FundiFix offices for research. "The use of UV-C LED-based disinfection appeared to be conceptually ideal for the problem we were faced, as it is a solution that requires minimum consumables when coupled with renewable energy,” said Dr Lui. “Our ambitious approach to the problem, factoring in safety, reducing water loss and recording usage, led to a more complicated design which increased the level of challenge associated with this remote technology-transfer imposed due to the constraints of COVID-19."
In December 2024, teams from UNSW and its Ugandan partners, Gulu University, opens in a new window and ASEI,, opens in a new window visited Kyuso town in Kitui county. During the visit, engineers from the visiting team and FundiFix installed a new UVC treatment unit designed by Gulu University-ASEI alongside the earlier installed unit. The Ugandan units have been installed in Schools and Health Centres in Uganda in collaboration with UNSW researchers and Humanitarian Engineering students, opens in a new window and the team are experienced in their installation and maintenance.
The newly designed system consists of a primary and a secondary column filter before the UVC treatment unit to reduce water turbidity, making it more palatable and more suitable for treatment by the UVC. The filters were designed by UNSW students in partnership with ASEI and Gulu University and consist of layers of varying grades of sand and of gravel. (Figure 3)
“Integrating filtration with UV water treatment is a game changer in provision of safe drinking water in underserved communities,” explains Dr Jimmy Byakatonda, opens in a new window, Lecturer in Irrigation Engineering & Water Management at Gulu University. “This technology is also handy in emergency situations where modern water treatment technologies may not be in place. With potable systems, they can be deployed anywhere at any time. More than often at these locations they have a single water source shared between humans and animals. In some of these communities, the only source of water is surface runoff which is highly turbid (more than 50 NTU). The filtration system developed by Gulu University/ASEI can achieve up to 95% efficiency in turbidity reduction. So incorporating the two systems is inevitable since UV-C treatment is only effective with water of less than 5 NTU. ”
Both the primary and secondary filters were constructed on-site at the FundiFix offices using locally sourced materials. The primary and secondary filter columns were 1200 mm and 1100 mm long, respectively. (Figure 4).
“Working with the FundiFix team on construction of the UV-C water sterilisation unit on-site helped us to better understand needs specific to Kyuso, Kitui county and how that influences design and usability,” said Moses Alicwamu, ASEI, opens in a new window’s Water Program Manager.
“For example, the Uganda units do not consider salinity as a problem, but the Kenya units should. Overall, it was a great learning experience that has strengthened our collaboration going forward.”
After construction and installation, the efficiency of the filters in reducing turbidity was tested using water from a river in Kyuso, village. The turbidity was reduced by 90.6% from 39 NTU to 3.68 NTU (Figure 6).
NTU stands for Nephelometric Turbidity unit, i.e. the unit used to measure the turbidity of a fluid or the presence of suspended particles in water. According to the World Health Organization, the turbidity of drinking water should not exceed 5 NTU.
Since the filters are constructed using locally available materials, they have the potential to be widely used for more affordable water treatment by local communities. However, the smallest particle size of 0.3 mm, which makes up 40% of the filter column, could not be attained while constructing the filter because the required sieves were not available. Hence, this challenge would need to be planned for well in advance to construct bigger filters and would further improve drinking water quality.
As REACH Co-Director and Professor of Environmental Health Risks at the University of Oxford Professor Katrina Charles, opens in a new window notes, “There are a lot of emerging technologies that offer promise for improving water delivery and safety. But for them to work, support is needed to understand and address local challenges. This collaboration between UNSW, GU and FundiFix has not just been about technology development, it has also developed the collaboration around implementation to understand the local context which is so important for finding solutions that work.”
The team from Gulu University and ASEI shared with FundiFix their experience of installing, opens in a new window and running the systems in Uganda, opens in a new window over the last four years. Among other things, the team shared their experience and knowledge of the application of different filtration technologies, such as bio-sand and cartridge filters, and how choices of a particular prefiltration process are informed by the existing water supply. Recontamination risk post UV-C filtration was discussed, having been identified in ASEI/UNSW testing of Ugandan systems already in-place, and potential strategies for reliable and safe water provision were mutually shared such as considering storage before UV-C water treatment. Filter replacement services as a potential business model (that could make the system a source of livelihood for rural people) was suggested by Dr. Byakatonda. From the discussions, FundiFix determined the filters’ potential applicability and suitable installation sites in Kyuso and Kitui.
A critical challenge of using the first system installed at the FundiFix office for testing is the low water flow required for an effective treatment, which would not be suitable for serving communities with high water demands. The flow rate of the installed system was set at 0.5L/min. This flow rate is low for water supply in larger institutions but increasing flow beyond that would affect treatment efficiency. Alternative bigger UV reactors would therefore be needed for higher-traffic areas. The capital investment of the larger UV reactors would, however, be a major hindrance to installing such systems in low socio-economic communities.
Samples from the first installed system were collected (at flow rate of 0.52 L/min) and tested for E.Coli, Total Coliforms, and Turbidity to assess the system's effectiveness in treating the water. The tests were undertaken at the water quality laboratory at FundiFix using the Membrane Filter Technique for E.Coli and Coliforms, and a turbidity metre for turbidity. It was observed that the E.Coli counts before and after the UVC reactor were both high (>100 MPN/ 100ml of water), showing that the system was not functioning as expected. The cause of the system ineffectiveness was not clear, and UNSW will continue to work with FundiFix to identify the problem.
Results from UNSW Humanitarian Engineering students who built a unit based on the Gulu/ASEI design in Sep-Nov 2024 showed that the unit removed E. Coli contamination levels from 2,300 CFU to 13 CFU and 890 CFU to <1 CFU, meeting the WGHO drinking water guidelines for safe water. The treated water was highly contaminated environmental samples (duck ponds at Centennial Park). Further, tests undertaken by ASEI/UNSW in Uganda showed that surface drinking water, the dirtiest of all water sources, had E. Coli levels removed from being “too numerous to count” to <1 CFU. Turbidity values following treatment were well below the allowable limit, ranging from 0.17 – 2.5 NTU.
Having seen the huge impact of the work by Gulu University and ASEI on the provision of safe drinking water in Uganda, opens in a new window, UNSW Academic Lead in Humanitarian Engineering, Associate Professor Andrew Dansie, opens in a new window said the Kitui project “was a tremendous opportunity to bring them and the FundiFix teams together to share knowledge and experience both ways.”
“We are thankful for the REACH Programme for their support,” he said, “and UNSW looks forward to continuing collaborations to expand this technology through Eastern Africa and beyond.”
