00:00The dried-out bed of the Thwake River in eastern Kenya.
00:05Villagers from nearby walk over the sandy strip that cuts through the landscape.
00:11Their donkeys carry yellow jerrycans in what almost appears to be a desert.
00:18But this riverbed hides a secret.
00:20Just a few centimeters beneath the surface,
00:24there's water, the lifeline for communities around.
00:27In arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya, most rivers only flow seasonally.
00:35To capture the little water they get, locals build sand dams.
00:39Simple, yet powerful structures that trap sand carried by the river during the rainy season.
00:47And that sand then stores water for the dry months ahead.
00:51What looks like mainly sand is up to 40% water.
00:54The Africa Sand Dam Foundation supports the construction of such dams in arid regions,
01:00helping communities adapt to the realities of climate change.
01:03And they are also enabling the conservation of the rivers,
01:11because when you construct a sand dam, as much as it is holding water,
01:15you are also conserving the river.
01:17And by conserving the river, you are conserving it against soil erosion.
01:22And you are also promoting biodiversity,
01:24because in areas where we have sand dams,
01:26there is a lot of vegetation that is growing around those areas.
01:29Because when you raise the water table, you enable the growing of a lot of trees and a lot of new vegetation.
01:36Farmers like Joseph Kilonzo profit a lot from the dam and the water it provides.
01:40This area is usually very dry.
01:45Without water nearby, nothing would really grow.
01:48But now, things are doing well.
01:51Like this maize plant, it's not even the maize season.
01:55It's the dry season here.
01:57Still, because of the water, I've been able to grow all these crops.
02:00I've planted papayas over here.
02:07Onions and kale there, and down below, some orange and fig trees.
02:13But the sand that sustains lives here is also in high demand elsewhere.
02:19Across Kenya, the booming construction industry consumes millions of tons of sand every year.
02:24It's a billion dollar industry.
02:26It is legal, but the market is unregulated.
02:28But in the past, illegal mining gangs often clashed with rival groups and conservationists, even leading to fatalities.
02:39In Makweni County, local authorities stepped in to regulate the mining.
02:44We were washed it by matters of sand.
02:47In a way or the other, sand within Makweni is seen to be so pure, it's seen to be of good quality,
02:53and everybody was harvesting sand from our rivers.
02:56And also, the issue of the rivers being seasonal, it becomes easy for someone to harvest sand from such kind of a river,
03:02especially during the dry season, unlike whereby you are harvesting sand on a flooded river.
03:08In neighboring counties, the problem still persists and places enormous pressure on communities and ecosystems alike.
03:16Sand mining can lead to river degradation, soil erosion, and loss of biodiversity in riverside areas.
03:23Regulation and laws were necessary, and just the first step for revitalization and sustaining the community's livelihoods.
03:30But change is also happening elsewhere, in Kenya's construction industry.
03:41In Nairobi's informal settlement, Kibera, a new kind of building block is taking shape.
03:47These hollow concrete bricks can be seen more and more often for good reason.
03:51It's quite different from the normal, conventional building material, like the masonry walls,
04:02because for it, it's an interlocking system, so you don't need mortar to do the joint work of the blocks.
04:08When you produce the blocks in our factory, you realize that we ensure that they have this smooth, fair-faced finish,
04:14so that you don't end up plastering your walls from outside or the internals of the walls.
04:22Social enterprise Stat Somewhere runs the Twist Block Project together with a German building company.
04:28Their aim, to provide an affordable, safe building solution in densely populated areas like Kibera,
04:35one of Africa's largest informal settlements.
04:38Several schools have been built with these innovative bricks.
04:41The company says that the technology is cheaper, reusable,
04:45and requires far less sand and concrete than conventional building methods.
04:52Back in Makweni County, 150 kilometers from Kadu-Kaseveni,
04:57another sand conservation project is underway.
05:00Three villages have joined forces to restore their river.
05:03This whole area used to be covered with grass, the kind we fed our cattle.
05:11But over time, floods and heavy rains washed it all away.
05:16That's why you can see the stones showing now.
05:19It used to be a fertile place, and we want to bring it back to life.
05:23Once the sand dam is finished, we'll plant grass here along the riverbank,
05:29so the water won't wash it away, and the vegetation can grow back like before.
05:35The Africa Sand Dam Foundation provides the materials and the expertise for building the dam.
05:41The community provides the labor.
05:43By securing water for the next dry season,
05:46they are responding to a huge challenge,
05:49a climate that's becoming harder to predict.
05:51This resourceful and responsible approach shows how communities can shape their own future.
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