Loss of a sibling inspired Birungi to fight waterborne diseases

Meeting her at Acacia Mall in Kampala, 22-year-old Saudah Birungi strikes me as humble, reserved and with a warm smile.
However, as we go further into the interview, I get to understand just how much pain she has been through following her mother’s struggles after the loss of her only brother. But she is a girl with passion and is determined to be successful.

“I grew up with a single mum who did all kinds of odd jobs to take both me and my brother through school. Unfortunately in high school, my brother suddenly fell ill and the condition couldn’t be handled at the school sick bay. The sad bit was that on the way to hospital, he passed on,” says Birungi who is from Hoima District.
The loss of her brother in 2012 traumatised her mother who stopped working and Birungi had to drop out of school to support her mother.
And it was during those difficult days that a friend told her about Social Innovation Academy which empowers marginalised youth to become social entrepreneurs.
“I applied and was accepted. After joining, I became very active in the trainings.”

Beginning
“It is from the academy that I found people with whom we shared similar pain; people who had lost loved ones due to waterborne diseases like my brother who died from drinking unboiled water at school. This is where the idea of Tusafishe started,” says Birungi.
Together with seven others, they met and brainstormed on how they could provide safe water to large communities without destroying the environment. And Tusafishe was born in 2017 in Mpigi District.
Tusafishe is an organisation that builds low cost water filters that serve up to a capacity of 1,000 people.

“We install this filter on schools, for example, and also train students on how to use the technology so as to ease maintenance without having to incur outside costs,” she explains, adding that they charge for the filters according to the capacity.

A large capacity filter that can serve a school goes for Shs2 million while small capacity filters for domestic use go for as low as Shs20,000.

Achievements
“The company has been able to build a filter at the Social Innovation Academy, refugee camps of Bidibidi and Nakivale, and installed more than 300 filters in different homes across Mpigi,” she says.
On top of this, they have continued to train women on how to make the filters. This, she says, has enabled them gain employment as they sell the filters.
However, Birungi says they encountered some challenges along the way. “It was hard at first to convince people to accept the technology. The skills were also very expensive to acquire as we had to hire expatriates.”

Future plans
Birungi says they have plans of widening their market from Uganda to the neighbouring countries. “We believe that the water problem is not only in Uganda, but worldwide. So we plan to expand in the future.”
She also has a word of advice to the youth: “Build on what you love and use it to better people’s lives.”

Nomination
Birungi was among the 20 young African entrepreneurs nominated for the Anzisha Prize Award last month. The winner of the $25,000 (Shs92 million) grand prize will be announced at the ninth annual Anzisha Prize Forum on October 22 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“I expect to learn more from the experience and I am confident that I will make it,” Birungi says.