The Situation of Water in Northern Region:

The Northern Region which is situated in the Northern part of Ghana undoubtedly experiences fewer rains and a prolonged dry season. Due to this, the availability and access to water could be very challenging to inhabitants living in the urban areas and much more difficult to the locals in the rural communities in Northern Region. Water in these parts of the region is really scarce and the main sources of water supply are streams, rivers, shallow ponds, boreholes, and rainwater. While water supply systems are generally inadequate, the problem worsens during the dry season, when most of the streams and other supply systems dry up.
Nevertheless, most of these rural communities depend solely on hand pumps for their daily water supply, and in the case where the handpump breaks down, most of them either make do with other water supply systems which are not usually safe or walk very long distances in order to get access to safe drinking water.

Fix That Pump Enterprise:
We are a social enterprise that has been in existence since 2020 and has been enabling impact in twenty-eight (28) communities with over sixty-five (65) hand pumps in Northern Ghana. We seek to solve the chronic challenges of non-functionalities of handpumps in Northern Ghana through regular repair and maintenance and have employed local mechanics mostly females from these communities to regularly repair and maintain broken down handpumps within their respective communities.

In a sustainable approach, we have employed local caretakers who assume the responsibility of monitoring the usage of the hand pumps and also making sure that handpump user fees are taken from the household level so that the community handpumps are always maintained and repaired to ensure that locals get access to safe, available and accessible water all year round.

Valuing Water:
‘Valuing water’ which is the theme for this year’s world water day celebration falls in line with our goal to ‘Reduce handpump downtimes’ is one which fuelled the enterprise’s activities in these rural communities because we know how water is valuable to these locals.

During our functionality mapping activities, we noticed that approximately 10 out of households within each community relied on a single handpump for water for all their daily activities such as cooking, farming, domestic activities, etc, this goes a long way to point out that many communities in Northern Region are facing severe water crises and as an enterprise, we are contributing our quota to ensure that some communities are able to access to clean water.