The Context

In rural Tanzania, there weren't carts and that mattered. It matters because in the dry season, villagers spend hours every day transporting water back to their homes to drink, cook and clean with. It mattered because they could only bring enough water to do those things, but not to grow crops or even a garden, which would help supplement their food during the leanest time of the year. It mattered because they carried that water on their heads, which has detrimental health impacts over the long term. It mattered because during the time of year when money was the tightest, hours that could have been spent on the basket to sell at market or working for some one or even going to school are spent carrying water to survive. So, it turns out, these Tanzanian villagers wanted carts, but needed one designed for their needs and at their price point. 

The Team

Drew Durbin, CEO  |   Alex Surasky-Ysasi, Lead Design Engineer  |    Tumaini Kwizera, Tanzania Country Lead

Matthew Ford, Engineering Consultant|  Carl Andersen, Design Consultant  |  Catapult Design, Design Consultancy

Design Brief

  • Low cost
    • Typical Anza customer earns the equivalent of $1 per day
    • Anza had some partners who work in microfinance but did not want to directly engage in creating payment plans
    • Goal for the price point became US $15
  • Capacity 
    • Based on household water use and existing carts, we determined the Anza cart needed to hold six jerry cans
    • The weight capacity of the cart needed to be 300 lbs
    • The cart had to clear common road obstacles
  • Durability 
    • The cart would not require major repairs within its first year
  • Repairability
    • The cart needed to be able to be repaired in country and ideally without traveling beyond the nearest market town
  • Assembly
    • The cart needed to pack flat for shipping and be simple to assemble with included tools

Brainstorming & Prototypes

Anza partnered with Catapult design during the research, brainstorming and preliminary prototyping portion of the project. Together the team developed a variety of models that were iterated on, tested and further refined. 

Engineering

Engineering work on the project was varied from determining the factor of safety to design with given the user needs in terms of cost and reliability to creating a testing protocol for the initial supplier samples. 

Manufacturing

Early on in the project, we discussed with other enterprises manufacturing products for farmers in Tanzania and Kenya their challenges and sought their advice. They suggested that for the time being we pursue manufacturing in China and so that's the direction the team headed. After weeks of trying to work with vendors to understand cost levers, it became clear that we needed to head there in order to get a clear sense of how to lower the cost of the cart. So for a month, we worked and negotiated with multiple vendors and refined the design to streamline manufacturing. We partnered with Grainger to vet the factories and ensure a quality product. 

Final Product