MAJIK WATER
ATMOSPHERIC WATER GENERATOR (HYGROSCOPY)
In the invisible humidity in the surrounding air, Beth Koigi saw an overlooked resource; drinking water.
It wasn’t random musing. While studying for a master’s in planning and project management at the University of Nairobi, she was forced to buy contaminated drinking water.
So, she created her own water filter and began selling them across her native Kenya, where more than half of the population has no access to clean water. She eventually teamed up with Clare Sewell, an Oxford economist, Malawi entrepreneur and strategy consultant, and environmental scientist Anastasia Kaschenko to launch Majik Water. Maji, in Swahili, means water. The “k” is for kukaa, which translates to “habiting.”
It was 2017, and Kenya’s now severe drought was just beginning. Koigi became a water security advocate. “We want to see a world where a woman doesn’t have to walk for four hours just to get 30 liters of water.”
At OwlVoices, we’ve been listening to innovators talk about small circles of access, especially when it comes to resources like water. Just as important is energy efficiency, or going off the grid altogether, to overcome a lack of infrastructure issues and provide disaster relief. Majik Water checks all the boxes.
Did you know there is six times as much water in the air as in all the rivers in the world?
In the lab, the three women figured out how to extract it. They took silica, exposed it to the atmosphere, then heated it in a distillation system. When the water came out of the other end, they started working on a product.
The plan was to use existing hardware and minimal energy. A solar panel was connected to a desiccant dehumidifier. They created a charcoal filter. Their first atmospheric water generator was a success, and the basis for a scalable mechanism used in small projects across Kenya, assuring that, “as long as you have air, you have water.”
In our mind’s eye, most of us envision and feel compassion for those struggling in far-flung places. In these moments, we feel lucky. But that “luck” is predicted to run out, soon.
The United Nations estimates that 1.8 billion people will be living with water scarcity by 2025, not just in isolated and undeveloped areas. Large economies like China and India are at great risk, as is much of Africa, the Middle East, and the Southwest US.
Climate change is very literal. Everything is thrown out of whack. Just as rising sea levels are already forcing people to migrate, water scarcity will create up to 700 million drought refugees, by the end of this decade.
Where are they going to go?
By 2050, water scarcity could affect five billion. Take a second and google what percentage that is of the entire world population.
While Kenyans wait in long lines to pay high prices to have their jugs filled with precious water, the Majik Water founders understand that this is not just a local problem. Their air-to-water technology can be a solution anywhere, and the largest system they have developed, so far, can harvest up to 100,000 liters of pure drinking water in one day.
