How One Woman Is Changing The Way Africa Gets Water And Ways You Can Get Involved

By Andrea Wolf

When Sivan Yaari enters a room, heads turn. Her hair falls gently down her back, pulled into a half-ponytail as per her usual style. Her French-Israeli accent is, at once, soothing and commanding, but no one should be fooled by her soft, magnetic presence – she is a powerhouse on a mission.

When Sivan was just 20 years old, she got a job at a Jordache Jeans factory in Madagascar. There, she saw firsthand the plight of those who lack water and electricity. Her genius was realizing that Africa has endless energy and water resources - if she could just harness them. In 2008 this simple but life-changing idea led to the creation of Innovation: Africa.

Innovation: Africa uses Israeli technologies to bring electricity and clean water to rural villages across Africa. To date, it has transformed the lives of over 4.2 million people in over 900 villages across ten African countries. Plus, it will be able to impact an additional 1.6 million people in 2023 by using the energy of the sun to pump clean water from the ground. In short, Sivan figured out how to marry critical natural resources to transform the lives of people lacking water and light with only positive environmental impacts.

Their organization's approach to humanitarian aid differs from other NGOs for three reasons. First, Innovation: Africa (iA) never leaves a person or a project. Their solar and water projects ensure access to electricity and water for several generations by utilizing Israeli-developed and UN-award-winning remote monitoring technology which monitors the amount of solar energy and water utilized at any given moment from anywhere in the world. Should any aberration in consumption occur, iA employees and donors receive an alert, then local teams of experienced engineers rectify the malfunction right away, ensuring the long-term sustainability of every project. Because of this remote technology, they can guarantee a lifetime of clean water and electricity. Sivan stays with every person she helps – for life.

Second, Innovation: Africa hires native, in-country teams, giving African engineers, accountants, and leaders full-time, productive, and meaningful work. At each of its water projects, iA hires, pays, and trains ten community members; usually, five men and five women, to form a committee that assists contractors with the construction of a sustainable solar water pumping system for each village. Throughout this training, the water committee develops essential skills to maintain and protect the system for years.

Third and finally, iA projects improve the environment. While iA's mission is for humanitarian aid and poverty alleviation, Innovation: Africa uses exclusively renewable energy sources. This sustainable, climate-friendly approach is bolstered by the downstream impact of providing villagers with water – they stop burning wood to boil and purify water. This behavior change has reduced carbon emissions in all countries where it works, which goes to show that the humanitarian and environmental impacts of Sivan's work are maximally sustainable.

In November of 2022, I had the privilege of traveling with Sivan and the Innovation: Africa team to Malawi. One woman I met at an open-source, contaminated water hole told me that Innovation: Africa allowed her to abandon this hole forever. I asked her why this mattered, and she told me that her daughters would not be raped on their way back from the water hole anymore. Now they will go to school. 

It was then that I understood why Sivan is endlessly passionate about this work. Sivan is a mother of twins and a younger son. She inherently understands the plight of other mothers in these blighted areas. She and the people she helps are not that different, and this is why she tirelessly pursues iA's mission. But she cannot do this work alone - she needs thousands of people across the globe to join her to be able to reach the most vulnerable populations.

One of the biggest challenges for iA today is that few people in the United States know about this revolutionary work and Sivan's transformative idea, even though she should be hailed as a heroine whose blinding passion is evident to all who know her. This passion can – and should – be translated to the masses so that they, too, can impact and change the lives of people across Africa.

This may seem far-fetched, but it is actually not. There are two primary ways for people in the United States to support iA's unprecedented work. One option is to spread the word because Innovation: Africa should be a household term in the United States or, at the very least, familiar among philanthropic communities and people who are driven by social good. 

Throughout human history, spreading messages and raising awareness has never been easier. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, LinkedIn, and other instantaneous communications, allow us to spread messages like wildfire. Innovation: Africa has TikTok videos, hashtags, prepared posts, and other easy ways to alert the world to its unprecedented work. 

The time is now. This low-hanging fruit is dangling before our eyes, and it is time to grab this opportunity and elevate it. This is especially true for people connected to the media and other PR outlets who can use their reach and influence for good, capitalizing on their networks to shout from the rooftops about its tech-based, sustainable, and compassionate approach.

Another way is to raise money to provide light and water to more people in Africa. These funds can save lives because it costs $25 per person to bring water to life. It works in villages with populations of 3,000 to 10,000 people, so bringing water to a village costs approximately $65,000. At the same time, providing electricity to a school or medical center costs $20,000. 

While these numbers may seem high, the ROI for any entity – let alone an NGO – is exponential. Further, it is incorporated in the United States, so every donation is tax-deductible. Because of a grant from a South African foundation, all of iA's overhead is covered, so every dollar raised goes directly to villages, schools, and medical centers. Innovation: Africa's dynamic staff can work directly with anyone who wants to organize teams, groups, or corporations to raise funds to bring clean water and light to African people.

About the Author:

Andrea Wolf is the U.S. Director of External Affairs at Innovation: Africa and is responsible for increasing partnership and visibility opportunities for the organization. Before this role, she served as CEO of the Brem Foundation to Defeat Breast Cancer. She started her career as an attorney in Washington, DC, where she lives with her husband and four daughters.

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