In 2017, a 16-year-old named Chioma Eze built a working water filtration system from locally available materials for her grandmother's village in Enugu State, Nigeria — after spending a school holiday watching her aunt walk two miles each way to collect water from a stream.
Chioma had read about biosand filters in a school science textbook. She had no money and no lab equipment. She used sand from a local quarry, gravel, charcoal from the market, and a large clay pot. She built four iterations before she got one that worked consistently. She tested the output herself and presented it to the village elders, who tested it independently for a month before allowing it to be used regularly.
The filter is still in use. In 2018 Chioma won a national youth science prize and a university scholarship. She studied environmental engineering and now runs a program teaching the same filter design to secondary school students across six Nigerian states. She says the most important thing she learned from the project was iteration: "The first three didn't work. That was the point."
Story shared by Chioma EzeHistorical Account
This happened to meEnugu, NigeriaJuly 2017
People: Chioma Eze