Salamu Kutoka Nairobi!
We have been in sunny, sometimes rainy, Kenya for a week and a half now. Over the past few days, we've been busy with user interviews and interviews with companies. First, we had an interview with one of the largest companies in Africa that focuses on water filtration. During the conversation we mainly discussed how a product can be marketed. Since the whole of Kenya is struggling with so many water problems, the market for the products is already quite saturated at the moment. This means that it is not easy to enter the market as a new product. Despite this being the case, Kenya is one of the most innovative and progressive countries in Africa, so it is doing relatively well economically.
In addition to our interview with the water filtration company, we visited Shofco in the Kibera district. Kibera is the largest slum in Kenya and according to various sources also the largest neighborhood in the world, with about 800,000 inhabitants. Shofco is an NGO that provides education for young girls and women and also wants to provide all of Kibera with clean drinking water. At the moment they already have a number of water kiosks, but this number will be expanded considerably.
Besides Nairobi, we spent an afternoon in Narok, a smaller and relatively old town. We visited a water filtration company there for an interview and at the same time we visited another user to see how this product would also work outside Nairobi. It is notable that different parts of Kenya present different problems when it comes to how the water has been polluted. For example, fluorine and iron are a problem in some parts and pollution with sewage pipes in others.
Tomorrow we will fly to Kisumu, a bustling fishing town on Lake Victoria, to complete the user survey there. You can find more updates on our instagram channel
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