One morning, while on a trip with friends in the Tunisian desert, Iheb Triki witnessed a rare sight. When he woke up, he noticed that their tents were covered with dew.
"Droplets everywhere, in large quantities! So the desert is full of water," he said. He thought of how to capture the moisture in the air and convert it into safe drinking water in areas with little or no water.
In fact, the Sahara Desert contains high levels of humidity and globally, the atmosphere contains six times as much water as all the world's rivers, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
In less than two years after his discovery, Triki's dream became a reality.
A graduate of France's prestigious École Polytechnique, Iheb and a classmate, Mohamed Ali Abid created a start-up in 2021. "We spent many months modeling and testing, at times experiencing failure, and we managed to develop our first prototype, the Kumulus," he says.
A solar-powered system stirs air inside the machine, which then passes through various filters that extract the moisture and turn it into drinking water. The Kumulus, which looks like an amphora, weighs 60 kilos, is easy to transport in a pick-up truck, and easy to install. It produces 20-30 liters of fresh, drinkable, mineralized water each day. It can be connected to the electrical grid or to solar panels.
By using smart technology, Kumulus can help provide additional drinking water in North Africa while also contributing to addressing climate change, in particular its impacts on water scarcity.
The first Kumulus was installed in an elementary school in Bayadha, a rural hamlet at the western tip of Tunisia where access to drinking water remains limited.
Not only has the dream become a reality, the Kumulus has gone on to win several awards and prizes. It was declared winner of the first Vivatech 2022 prize for start-ups specializing in the water sector, and has also been selected as one of the fifteen most promising "GreenTech" start-ups in Africa.
In October 2022, Triki was invited to participate in the 8th edition of "BIG" (Bpifrance Inno Génération) in Paris, an annual event that is the largest gathering of entrepreneurs in Europe. "Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon," Triki said. "You have to be tough and resilient to succeed. There were only a few of us who started the venture, with less than $20,000. We worked very hard to improve our product, and we had to convince the investors that our idea was a solution for the future."
All the effort paid off: Kumulus has raised $1 million and has expanded to include more computer developers, mechanical engineers and operations managers. Triki plans to develop and submit patents, develop fully autonomous equipment, and continue to develop the technology to make it more accessible.
"My dream is that every family can have its own water source, a sustainable source, its own Kumulus. We are getting there," he says.
With the support of the African Development Bank, the Tunisian Ministry of Industry has established the "Industry and Innovation 2035" strategy which aims to create an environment conducive to the emergence of high potential companies like Kumulus.
