KickStart's MoneyMaker Irrigation Pumps

KickStart is an international nonprofit organization that was founded in Kenya in July 1991 by Nick Moon and Martin Fisher. KickStart’s mission is to promote sustainable economic growth and employment creation in Kenya and other countries by developing and promoting technologies that can be used by dynamic entrepreneurs to establish and run profitable small scale enterprises.

In a move to teach the poor men to fish, instead of just providing them with fish, Martin and his partner Nick Moon decided to give rural Africans the information and tools they needed to start profitable businesses. They developed a low-cost irrigation tool called "MoneyMaker Pump". The inexpensive ($52-90) treadle operated pumps irrigate plots up to 2 acres in size from water pumped from hand-dug wells, rivers, streams, lakes or ponds. They provide adequate irrigation, allowing small-scale subsistence farmers to turn their land into vibrant commercial enterprises.

With irrigation the Kenyan farmers can grow and sell as many as three to four high value vegetable crops every year, and ensure that the crop is ready for market when the price is high. These "farmerpreneurs" are increasing their incomes by as much as ten-fold and making as much as 400,000 shillings ($5400) profit per year.

Impacts of KickStart MoneyMaker Pumps to date:

1. 36,000 pumps in use by poor farmers
2. 29,000 new waged jobs created
3. $39 million per year in new profits and wages generated by the pumps
4. More than 50% of pumps managed by women entrepreneurs
5. 4 manufacturers producing pumps in Nairobi and Arusha
6. 200 retailers selling pumps in Kenya and Tanzania

KickStart has a market and private-sector oriented approach. This is to ensure the impacts of its program become fully self-sustaining in local economies. Technologies are installed in the private sector and continue to be produced, marketed, and used by entrepreneurs to create thousands of vibrant new businesses and jobs, long after KickStart's interventions have ceased.

Other low-cost tools by KickStart:

1. A manually operated oilseed press that extracts oil from sunflower, sesame, and other oil seeds.
2. Action Pack Block Press, a manual press that can produce 500 rock hard building blocks a day.

Links:

http://www.kickstart.org