Alison Wedgwood is CEO of eWATERpay Ltd a UK tech start up revolutionising the delivery of water in rural sub-Saharan Africa. I have put in £500,000 of my own money and we have raised £350,000 of Angel funding, and are now looking to initiate a Series A fund round. Recently we have been advised by a Senior partner at Deloittes, and our new COO. was, until three weeks ago the Commander of the UK Navy Maritime Fleet, Rear Admiral Alex Burton.. eWater (http://www.ewaterpay.com/), recently featured on the BBC news (click for link to video) and in the Economist (click for link to article), has also recently won the RELX Group Environmental Sustainability Prize 2017 which was presented in Stockholm at the UN CEO Water Mandate conference at World Water Week (click for link to article).. eWATERpay is a pre-payment smart meter that can be fitted onto taps on any piped water systems in rural or urban areas of developing countries. It allows very low income households to pay affordable sums for water through loading their smart cards with eWATERcredit. The unique combination of three technologies integrating mobile and contactless pay technology, and IOT connectivity ensures the transparent collection of consumers’ water fees to fund the maintenance of water systems. Currently, $20 billion is invested in new water supply infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa per annum, but within three years, 40% of these systems are broken because there is no funded maintenance. eWATERpay solves this problem by ensuring revenue is tracked and accountable and transparently used by water Ministries, or private water utilities, to pay for continued maintenance.
