MajiSafe

Inspiration

In many African communities, clean water pumps break down simply because no one reports problems, payments aren’t tracked, or the systems lack accountability. People walk long distances only to find a broken pump or no water at all. We wanted to build a solution that is transparent, automated, community-driven, and accessible even without smartphones or internet. That’s how MajiSafe was born — a smart water-pump monitoring and accountability system powered by IoT, DKG, and simple SMS interaction.

What it does

MajiSafe turns any water pump into a smart, self-managing system. It:

📡 Monitors pump usage and health in real-time using IoT sensors.

🔐 Stores pump activity on the Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) for transparency and tamper-proof records.

📲 Let users interact via SMS — no smartphone or internet needed.

🚨 Automatically reports outages, anomalies, or irregular usage.

💵 Enables transparent digital payment tracking (optional) to prevent corruption.

📊 Provides dashboards for communities, NGOs, and government to track water access.

MajiSafe ensures that water pumps stay working, communities are informed, and accountability is visible.

How we built it

We combined IoT hardware, edge computing, decentralized data storage, and SMS accessibility:

Hardware/IoT: ESP32 + flow sensor + vibration & pressure sensors for pump activity.

Communication: SIM800L module for SMS-based interaction and data upload.

Backend: A lightweight local server + DKG integration using OriginTrail’s SDK.

Blockchain layer: Used DKG to publish verified pump logs and maintenance records.

Dashboard: Simple web UI for authorities, built with modern JS framework.

AI anomaly detection: Detects unusual pump behavior (no flow, overuse, suspected failure).

The entire system works even in offline rural environments, using SMS and automatic syncing when connectivity is available.

Challenges we ran into

Ensuring reliable sensor readings on low-cost hardware in harsh environments.

Making the system work with unstable network coverage and very low bandwidth.

Integrating SMS-based commands with DKG publishing flow.

Keeping costs low so the solution can be deployed in rural African communities.

Designing a secure and tamper-proof logging system without increasing complexity for users.

Each challenge made the system better and more resilient.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully built a fully working IoT prototype with live pump monitoring.

Achieved SMS interaction that works on any phone — even without internet.

Integrated DKG publishing, giving pumps verifiable transparency.

Built a dashboard that visualizes live pump data and history.

Created a system that can impact millions of people lacking reliable water access.

This is more than a hackathon project — it’s a real solution for real communities.

What we learned

How to combine IoT + blockchain + SMS into a single, user-friendly system.

The importance of human-centered design when building for rural populations.

Working with the OriginTrail DKG and understanding how decentralized data can improve trust.

Hardware constraints taught us how to optimize code for reliability and low power use.

And most importantly, we learned how technology can create real social impact.

Add mobile money integration (M-Pesa, Lumicash) for automated pump payments.

Deploy pilot installations in rural communities to collect real-world data.

Build predictive maintenance AI to anticipate pump failure before it happens.

Expand to solar stations, village power grids, and irrigation systems.

Open-source our hardware + software for community adoption.

MajiSafe aims to become the standard for transparent, reliable water infrastructure across Africa.