31 August 2020: While the corona virus is raging in Germany and around the world, the engineers from Enteria are building the first solar well of their Mati-Mati pilot project in Pembane, Mozambique. Marc-Oliver Bruckhaus, the chief engineer and founder of the company, travelled to Mozambique shortly before the shutdown. 

“Building in Africa is always a bit adventurous,” says the Wuppertal-born engineer, “but with Corona it was really much more extreme. It was simply not at all clear what we were allowed to do and what not, who would come to work and who wouldn’t, which delivery would arrive and which would not,” says the graduate industrial engineer. In the end everything went well and the plant was even completed on time.

Dirty water holes are now a thing of the past in Pembane. The fountain raises solar-powered clean fresh water into a 10-meter high reservoir and distributes it from there over a radius of 1.5 kilometers via a water network to the village, to eight easily accessible kiosks, the Fontenarias.

“Mati Mati” in Guitonga, one of the traditional national languages of Mozambique, means “water water” and expresses the spontaneous joy that people feel when they suddenly find clean water. The joy about the well is now visible as the whole village proudly carries the chic “water credit cards” on their lapels instead of in their pockets.

Football is played everywhere in Africa. This is why dena-consultant Carlos Eid has been advocating that there should also be a “Fontenaria” at the entrance to the football field of 1st FC Estrela. Thanks to such considerations, in conjunction with the local authorities and those in positions of responsibility, the integration of the facility, with its colourful towers and standpipes, into the everyday lives of the residents was an immediate success.

Due to the increasing drought in Africa, the inhabitants are already affected by the consequences of climate change. The operators of Enteria and their impact investors are using their know-how and capital to work with the people of Mozambique to enforce the right to clean water. 

They are building modern solar wells, which are  economically linked to solar power production in Germany via an Internet cloud. So if one kilowatt hour of solar electricity is produced in Germany, one litre of clean solar water can be promoted and distributed very low priced in Africa. As with a “water-ATM”, comparable to a money-ATM, the villagers can withdraw fresh water for their daily consumption at the eight kiosks.

To this end, the Wuppertal-based company is currently setting up an IT backbone together with the IT specialists at ISAtech Water GmbH, in which all booking and production processes of the connected systems can be transparently displayed. It is important to the project participants that the smart water network is perceived by the residents as a common good of the village. A central idea of the Mati Mati concept is that all revenues from the facilities remain in the respective village and are used there for the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure. The IT portal creates the necessary transparency to gain the trust of the users.

The aim of Enteria is a supra-regional community of values for climate justice, in which industrial energy customers in Germany are connected with local village communities in Africa. Together they take responsibility for ensuring that we can hand over a planet worth living on to our children. The transfer of know-how in all directions plays a key role here. What concrete effects does climate change already have today? How can we deal with it in concretely? How can it be prevented or mitigated in the long term? How can we help each other? The answers to these questions are essential for all people to survive in times of climate change. 

Enteria has entered into know-how partnerships with the pump manufacturer Wilo and ISAtech Water GmbH in order to put the project on a long-term solid economic and technological basis. They are supported by the funding experts of the German Energy Agency (dena), who see Mati Mati as a successful example of the energy turnaround.

The solar well in Pembane with its taps, the eight “Fontenarios”, was completed in July 2020 and immediately handed over to the village community. Since then it has been in full operation and is used intensively.