When Innovation is Child’s Play

• Author: Elizabeth March,
• Position: WIPO Magazine Editorial Staff, Communications and Public Outreach Division

At the end of another school day in Acornhoek - a rural community in the semi-arid eastern part of South Africa - children shriek with laughter as they whirl each other around on a colorful merry-go-round. Women carry home buckets of water. Boys chase a football.

But there is more to this scene than meets the eye. Forty meters under ground, each turn of the merry-go-round powers a pump. At 16 rotations per minute, it pumps water effortlessly to a 2,500-liter storage tank, supplying the needs of the entire community at the turn of a tap.

The storage tank above the children’s heads displays four billboards. These carry educational, public health and HIV/AIDS prevention messages, as well as commercial advertising, generating enough revenue to fund ten years’ maintenance of the system.

The idea was first dreamt up by engineer and borehole-driller, Ronnie Stuiver. As he traveled the country drilling wells, fascinated children would crowd round him- most with boundless energy and few outlets for play. He devised a merry-go-round attached to a simple pump. It worked. But it took the entrepreneurial vision of advertising executive Trevor Field, who stumbled across the pump at an agricultural fair in 1989, to transform an ingenious invention into an innovative, sustainable solution to one of the region’s most pressing problems.

Turning point

With two business colleagues, Mr. Field licensed the concept from the inventor and launched Roundabout Outdoor. They developed and patented the PlayPump^TM water system. For years it remained a small venture. Then in 1999 President Nelson Mandela opened a new school with a PlayPump merry-go-round and took a spin on one. The press photos captured the imagination of donors and investors. A collaboration began to flourish between the PlayPumps International non-profit organization and big business and government sponsors. The following year, Roundabout Outdoor won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award, bringing extra visibility and new funds.

Today, some 700 PlayPumpTM systems are installed in disadvantaged communities...