Dov Lipman talks about the work of Innovation Africa, transforming millions of lives through providing clean water and electricity for entire villages, schools and hospitals, and ensuring that the local people take ownership of the project and maintain it.



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Innovation Africa

We actually have communities, churches, and individual people who have come and said we want to dedicate a school, here is 18 thousand dollars to provide electricity for a school, provide electricity for a medical centre and then it's named after them. There is a plaque there, they can come and be part of it. We have water systems that are named after communities as well, entire villages that are transformed by various foundations. We recently had a Christian foundation in the United States that donated to transform an entire village. Water, farming, a medical centre, school and they are literally taking an entire village and lifting it out of the dark and giving it a whole new future.

Paul: Now we are doing the interview here in an old hospital. You're going into hospitals today and transforming the lives of people in hospital as well.

Dov: That's the most amazing thing, there are people who give birth, women coming to give birth with no electricity, they have no refrigerators for the medications and vaccines, and they don't have doctors coming to their medical centres because they don't have the most basic services. All it takes is 18,000 dollars and putting in that electricity in a medical centre, means that all of a sudden they have refrigeration for vaccines and all the children can be medicated and vaccinated and the best doctors will come and treat them day and night. Literally a revolution happening, something again which we take for granted, you can go to a hospital and you have services, they don't have that, thank God we are able to partner together and make that happen.

Paul: How do the people feel who are receiving all these benefits?

Dov: It's the most amazing thing to see the joy on their faces when light bulbs go on in a school for the first time and the kids start cheering and dancing. When the water taps are turned on for the first time and they just start dancing and chanting and rubbing the clean water on their faces, utter joy and utter thanks. They even offer their thanks to Israel, you know this is Israel fulfilling its mission, its biblical mission to be a light unto the nations and they feel we are providing them with that blessing.

Genesis 12 teaches us, those who bless Israel are blessed, tremendous blessing all around for Israel, for the people who partner with us with the funding for the people on the ground who actually receive the benefit of this Israeli innovation.

Paul: God is blessing you as well by providing the finance to go out and actually do this.

Innovation Africa

Dov: There is no doubt. Sivan started this nine years ago and she had seen first-hand some of the poverty in Africa. She raised money for two solar panels. That was her idea just to start there, and to see where we are nine years later with this success, but not success on a prideful, selfish manner, success in touching the lives of other people and making it better. Like I said before, it is pure good and I don't have a doubt that God is blessing the organisation with success, but also blessing those who help the organisation accomplish its mission.

Paul: You're also able to track these systems as well aren't you?

Dov: This is the most incredible part, there is an Israeli innovation which is a remote monitoring system. We at any time from our smart phones can see every single village in all these countries. How is the water flowing? How is the electricity flowing? If there is any problem, making sure that the engineers go there right away to make sure there is no waste, there's no abuse of the system and again that's Israeli innovation to monitor. We also follow up to make sure the villages follow through to maintain their projects. We don't want to see the money going to a project and then it not actually fulfilling its role, its mission, so we are able to do that as well. Thank God for the most part, village after village, 162 so far, are following through. We have a vision in 2025 we want to have reached 1000 villages, reaching millions and millions more. It's very doable as long as we have the right partners to help accomplish that.

Paul: You're also providing Israeli computers into schools as well?

Dov: So this opens up all kinds of opportunities, for all kinds of Israeli innovation to go in and be used. We have dreams of using Israeli innovation not just in the schools but also in the farming as well, there is all kinds of ways that we can help them get even more crops than they are getting right now. To see Africa, African desert areas, villages, remote villages, all of a sudden have lush farming and produce crops and commerce it's literally taking a community that had no hope and no possibilities for a future and handing them the opportunity for a future. But like I said they take ownership over it and they can pass that on to the next generation as well.

Paul: The irrigation system, the drip system is an Israeli system and I always feel this is such a simple idea, such a stupid idea, but it is what Israelis have provided and put out there. It's just a pipe that drips really isn't it?

Dov: That's right, the whole idea of the dream of taking the desert in Israel and making it bloom. Something we have seen over the last 100 years and certainly the last 70 years of the State of Israel, that miracle which came obviously through the blessing of God, but also through Israeli Innovation to help partner with God in this.