It has gone viral. I open my WhatsApp and someone else has sent me the image.  Vibrant colors -- red, yellow and green – decorate the drum.  It is crowned with a small solar panel. Sitting atop the drum is a stainless steel handwashing sink.  It is difficult finding a more picturesque handwashing station.

It is a striking prototype. When you step to the handwashing station the sensor – solar powered – squirts “soapy” water onto your hands. A beeping starts. It is programmed for 25 seconds. You should be rubbing your hands. The beeping stops. Clean water flows from the tap for you to rinse. You have not touched the handle of a tap or a soap dispenser. In the time of COVID-19, hand hygiene is critical. 

There are other hygiene related innovations.  Kelvin Owusu Dapaah and Richard Boateng created a COVID-19 protection bucket and Jude Osei designed a solar powered hand washing sink.  These inventions enable handwashing under flowing water.

I am delighted. It is heart-warming to see the blossoming of creativity. Ghanaians are making ventilators. Especially in the context of COVID-19, where stories of the pandemic can steal hope, the stories of these innovations surely provide optimism. 

But my delight is fleeting.

It is 2020, why are we excited about the innovation of handwashing stations that allow us not to have to touch a tap? Are we not aware that hand washing stations (HWS) with sensors have long been around?  Is this because many of us go to schools and visit healthcare facilities that do not have access to water, let alone pipe-borne water?

How come in 2020 creating HWS is so important and leads to local innovations?  Is it because for decades, there were few government led investment in hygiene behavior change, so the practice of “washing” hands in a bowl remained a common unhygienic behavior. 

How come in 2020, innovators are designing HWS that are mobile?  Is it because too many public spaces do not and cannot provide access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services?  Think of your local market and bus station.  Without the Veronica Bucket, how would you wash your hands?

COVID-19 has brought the importance of hand hygiene to the fore front of our collective minds. This has spurred interventions.  However, alongside the word “innovation” we should be thinking about “waste” and “theft.”

It is a “waste” when innovators use creativity to build hand washing stations, although it is important in the era of COVID-19.  It is a “waste” of their intellect and creativity in 2020 because this should have been addressed long ago. It should have been resolved in 2011 when over 8,000 people contracted cholera and in 2014 when the same disease affected over 20,000 people in Ghana.   In short, holistic solutions are past due. Intellect and creativity are not channeled strategically. Waste persists.

Think “waste” from another perspective. The handwashing stations designed require that one pour away the “wastewater” manually. What are the implications of this technology for women who already bear the brunt of unpaid care work?  This is not a digression. This is not to indict the innovators for faulty design.  Rather, I emphasize the need for holistic solutions.  Given current cultural practices, emptying “waste” water would “remain” the work of women and girls. Thus, disposing “waste” water, possibly contaminated with COVID-19, would be gendered, potentially increasing the risk of exposure of women and girls to the corona virus.  Exposing women and girls disproportionately to handling “waste” water, wasting the productive time of many women, and the waste of Ghanaian innovativeness all reflect a failure of leadership and a theft of the future.

The ruling classes of Ghana, irrespective of political party, have stolen much of the future. The ruling class is guilty of stealing the future, when they fail to deliver the basics of life: safe water, dignified sanitation, quality shelter, and food. In 2020 in Ghana, no one’s creativity, innovativeness, and intellect should have to be focused on developing handwashing stations with flowing water. This is only necessary because of the utter failure of the ruling class, decade after decade. Were it not for this failure, these Ghanaian youth could possibly be channeling their energies differently, to other pressing challenges. Consider, the five young women from Onitsha, Nigeria who were part of the only African team to participate in the Technovation challenge in 2019.  They are developing a way to differentiate counterfeit medicine from authentic ones. The creativity of African youth is immense.  Yet too much of this of Ghanaian/ African talent goes to waste, because of the failure of our ruling class.

Yet we applaud.  Perhaps applauding the “innovation” of solar powered handwashing stations in 2020, is a way to hide our collective embarrassment and pain?

Dr. Chaka Uzondu is a Policy Analyst. His writings cover topics ranging from water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), health, housing, agroecology and political economy.