The NEST by Worldview Technology

2.3 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. Worldview Technology is building an innovative waterless toilet in Namibia, to increase access to safe sanitation. We collect the human resources to a central composting facility which turns it into briquettes.

Our value proposition compared to our competitors is that The NEST has built in solar light, so that our users do not defecate in the dark. An incremental improvement that has resulted in tremendous benefits for our users. Furthermore, we are improving upon a hand crank mechanism to automate "the flush" of saw dust for ease of use and to create a more enjoyable toilet experience.  

In 2018, we ran a successful pilot project with a household of 4 women and saw a significant increase in convenience time for them. They no longer had to share a communal toilet with 1,000 other people or walk long distances to find some privacy.

Sanitation, including access to toilets, is one of the several social challenges that the Namibian government is struggling to find a sustainable solution for. At 34 per cent, the country has the lowest levels of sanitation coverage in southern Africa, a situation that has not improved since 2006. In addition, close to half of all Namibians practice open defecation, a rate that is one of the highest in Africa, just behind Somalia and South Sudan (Dhsprogram.com, 2019).

According to the 2011 Census, 48.6% of the population do not have access to a toilet facility. The National Household Income and Expenditure Survey (NHIES) of 2009/10 revealed that the figure is even higher in some regions: for example 80% of the people in the Ohangwena region did not have access to basic toilet facilities. 

Lastly, the current sanitation solutions are not only undignified, but also cause immense environmental damage. Pit latrines are emptied every few months by poorly trained and equipped service employees. These "frogmen" jump into the pits of human waste, manually empty the pit latrines using buckets, and then haul the overflowing buckets of waste through the community.

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Since launching our pilot project in the urban slums of Windhoek, the target population is an impoverished community with a population of about 190 000 people. Most of the households feature large extended families requiring greater financial resources to sustain themselves. The members of the local community who are employed work in low wage jobs such as clerical support, construction and general labour. 

The majority black citizens in Namibia, who lack access to adequate sanitation is mainly a result of the apartheid legacy, where the regime had systematically denied them access to this fundamental human right in an effort to oppress them. The lack of sewage systems in Namibia and the resulting improper waste disposal spreads devastating waterborne diseases which affect mainly poor Namibians. 

Lastly, during our needs analysis, 100% of the households surveyed owned one or more mobile phones in the house. By using the mobile phone they can pre-order the NEST directly from us, request maintenance or collection of toilet resources. This has surprisingly been a quick tool for co-creation to give us direct feedback from our users. 

Worldview Technology is building an innovative waterless toilet in Namibia called the NEST to increase access to safe sanitation. 

The NEST is made from HDPE, making it durable and weighs less than 35 kg, so it is light enough to carry. The toilet system has built in solar light so that our users do not defecate in the dark.

Through a subscription model, households pay $13 per month making it a cost effective and a hygienic solution for areas that have no sewage infrastructures. We provide a service similar to how municipalities collect rubbish from households but instead we collect human resources to take to a central composting facility which further processes it into briquettes.

We have designed the NEST around a circular economy which is divided into Toilet technology, Transport, Treatment and Transformation to allow for resources recovery.

Compared to other sanitation facilities, the NEST is beautifully designed and has a hand crank mechanism for ease of use to "flush the saw dust" which increases the convenience for our users unlike other available solutions.

Furthermore, we are the only company in the world that has solar light with the NEST so that households do not defecate in the dark. This tiny innovation shows our great commitment to tackling the problem holistically.

Our business model and waterless toilet increases the convenience and reliability for users which traditional waterborne toilets can not as they are limited to sewage infrastructure, intensive capital investments and land type.

Along our value networks, we use sms/whatsapp to order the NEST, and for maintenance and repairs on request allowing us to deliver sanitation goods and services much easier and faster for only $13 per month. 

To date we have observed different applications. One surprising instance during our pilot project, was when Minah's family requested us to bring along toilet paper to their home from town that they will pay cash on delivery. 

Our market based approach to solving the sanitation problem, along with the design iterations we have planned for NEST can gives us a disruptive edge to help Namibia achieve SDG 6 by 2030.

The NEST makes great use of existing technologies such as solar lights, recycled HDPE, traditional composting, and mechanical motors which are all put together in a product architecture that allows underserved communities to have a waterless toilet directly in their own home.

We also make use of sms/whatsapp technology in our sanitation as a service business model for orders and maintenance requests.

Finally, we are iterating on the NEST v2 to make use of raspberry pi and sensors to allow real-time tracking of functional status, and to get insights for decision making and usage.

Our market based approach to sanitation seeks to address the challenge of financial sustainability, while empowering local communities and individuals to make their own decisions about obtaining sanitation products. Hammond et al. (2007) argue that those in the Bottom of the Pyramid constitutes a EUR 3.5 trillion global consumer market which reveals "significant opportunities for more inclusive market based approaches that can better meet their needs and increase their productivity.

We have greatly overcome the infrastructural challenges in Namibia. The NEST aims to primarily increase the usage of clean and eco-friendly toilets in households that previously did not have one.

In the urban slums of Windhoek, there are communal toilets, called "white elephants" that are abandoned and not used because they are smelly, in poor conditions, and when it rains, they overflow infecting thousands of residents.

Evidence from our first pilot shows that we have designed and built a product that our users love to use. We already saw an increase of usage from day one of installation to day four.

Last year we conducted a pilot project with a family of four women that was previously sharing a communal toilet with 1,000 other people. 

This year, a second pilot project is being set up in Havana informal settlement where the team has built a good relationship with the community. The pilot consists of 10 households of 6 people in each homestead. By providing access to adequate sanitation to the households, this project will boost the health and dignity of 60 people.

In 5 years, assuming the following are in place: 

i) Core of technologies well proven 

ii) R&D yielding new re-use products and more value from sanitation streams

iii) Commitment from local municipalities 

iv) Effective operations and design 

v) Full time staff and startup capital 

We plan to impact 160,000 people by providing sanitation services to 40,000 households in the Khomas region.

Over the next 12 months our Go-to-market strategy is to firstly introduce the NEST through a B2C (Business-To-Consumer) model for households, gain acceptance of the system at scale. We aim to sell 100 units by end of June 2020 and employ 10 youths.

By starting with this larger market segment, it will allow us to validate our model and make necessary product improvements as the business grows.

In 5 years, our target is to reach a critical mass of users, and then move towards providing a "system solutions" for local governments and municipalities to help build more sustainable cities.

Our Assumptions and Calculations:

a) According to the Namibia Statistics Agency, Income and Expenditure Survey 2015/2016, the Khomas region has 400,191 people, of which 193,164 people (48%) do not have access to adequate sanitation. 

Therefore, (160,000/ 193,164) * 100 = 82.83% of the people impacted in ONLY 5 years. 

Lack of access to seed capital to iterate on the design solutions and implement learnings. Our team has worked incredibly hard to attract the necessary resources to build the first version of the NEST. Unfortunately,limited financial resources, coupled with an economic recession in Namibia is proving to be a huge barrier to achieving our next milestones within the planned time frame.

Behaviour change of users. Although we view this as a marketing problem rather than a technology problem, effort must be made to show the attractiveness of eco-friendly toilets compared to conventional water based toilets.

Our team consists of very talented young people who have shown in the past that they can attract capital for the project. Looking at the wider global community, our plan is to take part in competitions or respond to calls for proposals to fund our R&D and product iteration. We won ($20,000) 1st place in the TOTAL Startupper of the year competition in Namibia. 

In April 2019, we formed strategic partnerships with three local artists who have a combined following of +90,000 on facebook for our marketing efforts to help increase awareness and make the NEST a desirable product to have.

Furthermore, we are planning viral campaigns in towns and schools that inform communities on the benefits of adequate sanitation to have a long lasting change.

The core management team consists of 5 highly qualified team members with commendable experience.

We also have 3 experts on our Advisory Board.

My reality as a person of color was that black homes did not have toilets. Growing up in a small village in Namibia, we did not have access to the conventional toilet technology, instead we would use the bush to relieve ourselves.

I have fond memories of my parents taking us to the beach but we would see signs on the toilets that would read "whites only." 

The Worldview Technology core management team consists of two other highly qualified members with commendable experience. My co-founder, Meitavelo is a mechanical engineer at the Namibia Water Corporation. He has experience in the construction of mechanical infrastructure, and formed part of a team that worked on a preliminary design for the modification of a raw water pump.

The COO, Joas is a professional Engineer and has experience in water and sewer reticulation services in Namibia.

Another key quality that the team possess is our ability to bootstrap and attract resources. It is this same positive outlook that has allowed us to put a fundraising plan of $5,000 in 3 months to build and successfully launch our first project.

We have a burning desire to provide a better tomorrow for Namibia. A tomorrow that the educated African youth can help build.

Some notable achievements is that we have formed a 24 months strategic partnership with Non Water Sanitation; an organization from Germany to provide further technical expertise to pilot our new toilet model that we are building.

Agreed Partners:

1. The Namibia Biomass industry Group (N-BiG) has a wide range of technical expertise. Technical expertise includes; biomass harvesting, processing equipment and sourcing, logistics, biomass value addition, biomass marketing and regulatory concerns. They complete our circular economy model by making briquettes from the human resources at their composting facility.

Verbal:

1. Rundu Town Council: The mayor of Rundu had verbally agreed to support us in scaling our project to Rundu. Rundu is the capital and largest town of the Kavango Region located in the northeast of Namibia along the Kavango River. Not only is it the capital of the Kavango Region but is also the second largest town in Namibia, in terms of the population.

Prospect: 

1. City of Windhoek

2. Ministry of Urban and Rural Development

3. UNICEF Namibia 

Worldview Technology’s disruptive business model in which users pay a small subscription fee of $13 per month, allows for thousands of people the opportunity to access clean sanitation in their own homes. 

The approach adopted is an innovative model of a sanitation value chain that is replicable in other areas in Namibia. Through our business model we can deliver an essential product like the NEST and its services, faster, easier and cheaper than the traditional toilet system.

Revenue model:

1) The monthly subscription revenue stream from household toilets at a Price of $13.

2) Another market segment and revenue stream is from the NEST+plus model for events or public spaces. Users will pay $0.3 to use the public waterless toilets.

3) 15% commision from the sale of Briquettes by N-BiG.

Future revenue streams:

a) Fertilizers

i) The generated compost can be sold for N$ 80 for a 20kg bag. Depending on the utilization rate of the toilets, one can estimate to produce up to 1,000 bags per month from 50 toilets.

b) Consulting on sanitation as a service

We believe the circular flow economy is currently fragmented with too many players and little collaboration which hampers scalability of all solutions. Applying to solve will connect us with great minds in the previous cohorts, help us form partnerships that can unlock growth to reach our goals much faster than if we worked on this solution alone.

Lastly, we want to contribute to the SOLVE community. We can also offer new insights on tackling global problems from working in emerging economies and as a result help achieve SOLVE's mission.

USAID - financial partners that can help in growing the number of households reached and advise on future development of our circular flow model.

United Nations - to provide research support and behaviour change programmes for monitoring of sanitation trends.

Other sanitation startups to collaborate on projects and test our solutions.

At Worldview we aim to forster and harness science and technology to build innovative circular sanitation solutions. The communities that we work in are already left behind by the current toilet technology.

With the prize it will provide adequate resources for us to devote more time and execute on our strategy to put more eco-friendly toilets in off-grid communities. 

Finally, with the GM Prize on Circular Economy our team will use the prize money to build and experiment a chatbot system to monitor the requests coming in by location and distance to make informed decisions on how best to provide our sanitation as a service model, reduce carbon footprint with more efficient deliveries, and as a result building healthier communities.

Women and girls are more disportionately affected by lack of access to adequate sanitation than men. In Namibia, women are more likely to experience gender based violence on their way to find some privacy and a bush to defecate behind. 

In the pilot we conducted in a household of 4 women, having a clean and safe toilet in their home was more likely to increase their attendance at school and other health benefit.

Furthermore, the Nest makes great use of mobile phone. Firstly users send an sms requesting the NEST to be installed in their home.