Israeli technology selected to fight severe drought in South Africa

The project is projected to help over fifty early-childhood development centers, around seventy-nine schools in Uitenhage and KwaNobuhle, four health clinics and around 3,400 individual households.

GEN-350 in South Africa (photo credit: FORD MOTOR COMPANY)
GEN-350 in South Africa
(photo credit: FORD MOTOR COMPANY)
An Israeli company that specializes in creating and manufacturing water treatment technology was chosen by World Vision South Africa to assist in implementing their system into communities suffering from severe droughts.
By using the humidity in the air to produce clean drinking water, its internal water treatment system can produce up to 900 liters of pure, safe-drinking water per day.
"The continued increasing population, contamination of rivers, inefficient water infrastructure and a dependence on water usage for the coal industry have all contributed to the ongoing challenges in maintaining a sufficiently fresh water supply throughout South Africa," Watergen stated in a press release.
The local branch of World Vision in South Africa will transport and install the technology, called the GEN-350, in the affected communities stretched across the Eastern Cape in the months to come, and the endeavor is estimated to be fully implemented within these communities in the next two years -  with the help of a $200,000 grant from the Ford Motor Company and 130,000 from the Ford Research and Advanced Engineering fund.
The grant money was partially used to purchase the GEN-350, while Ford also granted the mission with a Ford Ranger 2.2 TDCi XL Double Cab to transport the machinery from community to community.
In relation, Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company Bill Ford landed in Israel last Thursday to visit Watergen's headquarters in Herziliya in order to learn more about the project from the developers where he was able to taste the water produced by the company's machinery, as he wanted see the technology first-hand.
The project is projected to help over fifty early-childhood development centers, around seventy-nine schools in Uitenhage and KwaNobuhle, four health clinics and around 3,400 individual South African households.
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“We are thrilled with this shared cooperation. We share the same goals of assisting communities all around the globe," said Watergen President Dr. Michael Mirilashvili.