Bangladesh has one of the highest concentrations of the poorest people in the world, and suffers from acute resource pressures. In the early 1980s, thousands of farmers in Bangladesh began using treadle pumps – a simple but ingenious foot-operated device that draws water up from wells, shallow aquifers or surface water — to irrigate small plots of homestead gardens instead of lugging heavy buckets of water.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was convinced that this technology could help African farmers if it could be adapted to local conditions and produced locally. In cooperation with the International Fund for Agricultural Development and with the assistance of International Development Enterprises, a non-governmental organization, in 1996 local manufacturers in Zambia were trained to produce and sell the pumps. Soon a network of retailers spread across the country and over 1,000 pumps were sold at a cost of $75-$125. Similar ventures with local manufacturers have started in Burkina Faso, Malawi, Senegal and the United Republic of Tanzania.