A pragmatic, out-of-the-box thinker and leading authority on the design, manufacture, and maintenance of handpumps in low-income countries, Erich was a forceful advocate for the community ownership and management of small-scale water schemes and an indefatigable trainer of government engineers and village-level operatives.

Erich was born and grew up in Switzerland. After graduating as a mechanical engineer, he began his career designing tractors, but the 1970s were a bad time for the industry and many factories, including his, closed. So, in 1979, he moved to Bangladesh where he began work at the Mirpur Agricultural Workshop and Training School (MAWTS) where his focus moved from tractors to expanding the manufacturing capacity of factories to produce and sell the simple rower-pump, which was ideal for low-cost irrigation. It was through this that he met Ken Gibbs (UNICEF) and Tim Journey (World Bank) who were working on improvements to direct-action handpumps for domestic water supply.

In 1984, Erich turned down a job at the World Bank to return to Switzerland and join SKAT, which was then an association affiliated with the University of St. Gallen. He rose to become Managing Director and navigated the organisation through the tricky transition of becoming an independent consulting company, SKAT Consulting Ltd, in 1997 and establishing Skat Foundation in 2002, before handing over the reins to Jürg Christen. His attention to detail and quality was applied to getting ISO 9000 accreditation in quality management within the organisation.

But perhaps Erich will be best remembered for his progressive management of two influential, global development networks: The Handpump Technology Network (HTN); and The Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN).

In 1992, in the wake of the 1981-1990 International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSD) during which hand pumps had become the mainstay of rural water supply programmes, a meeting was organised by the donor community at Kakamega, Kenya. A global forum for the better coordination of hand pump development, manufacture, operation and maintenance was mooted and Erich was tasked with setting up a Secretariat for what was to become the Handpump Technology Network (HTN). It was to be funded by The Swiss agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) and based at Skat in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

After twelve years under Erich’s leadership and with the proven benefits of this coordinating technical network for everything related to hand pumps, the HTN mandate was broadened in 2004 to become the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) to more comprehensively support rural water supply initiatives from drilling and hand pumps to water quality testing and everything in between.

During his tenure, his achievements, which it is no exagerration to say have touched the lives of tens of millions of people and their everyday water access, included:

Supporting governments in multiple countries, including Ghana and Uganda to develop standardisation policies so that chaos of 10, 20, 30 different handpumps was rationalised to 2-3 so that supply chains and operation and maintance support become more sustainable.
With the CAD skills of Karl Erpf, developed comprehensive public domain blueprints for the most widespread handpumps, including the India Mark II/III, Afridev, Tara, Jibon, No.6, and Walimi, which have been used in the manufacture of many millions of handpumps across Africa and Asia.
Organising four global HTN/RWSN Forum conferences in India, Malawi, South Africa and Ghana
Raising the alarm about high rates of handpump failure and the causes that needed to be addressed.

Those of us who worked with Erich in the early years know that the HTN and its successor, the RWSN, would never have come into being, let alone thrived, without his passion, drive and commitment. His engagement with Network members, travels to participating programmes in far flung places, the training courses he ran and his precise documentation of the successes and failures of water projects around the world, reinforced belief in the worth of the RWSN, while his promotion of multi-year work plans secured longer term funding and continuity in the running of the Network.

In 2009, after seventeen years, Erich handed over the reins of the Secretariat to Dr Kerstin Danert and retired to Ireland from where he maintained a watching brief over his RWSN brainchild, mentoring and encouraging his successor to grow the Network. Which she did, embracing drilling practice and bringing it mainstream.

Kerstin was succeeded in 2017 by the Network’s third and current Director, Sean Furey who has continued to build on Erich’s pioneering initiatives and Kerstin’s work while expanding the RWSN remit and enhancing its profile such that it is now recognised by donors, governments and sector professionals as the leading rural water supply forum globally – a vibrant network of some 17,000 members in 174 countries and bringing rural water supply know-how and technical solutions to quite literally, millions of poor communities. This then, is Erich’s legacy, and likely a long lasting one.

Erich was a humanist at heart; generous and self-effacing but dogged in the pursuit of a goal. Balancing the serious business of rural development with his own wry brand of humour was a welcome asset when accompanying him on contentious field missions or when engaged in difficult negotiations with partners.

Erich was a much-valued mentor to many water wallahs around the world and a great friend to those who were lucky enough to know him. He was a one off. Irreplaceable.

RIP Erich and thank you for what you did in the time that you had, mostly for others.

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More Information

» Watch: short tribute by Sean Furey

» Read: “From Tractors to the Tara pump” Erich Baumann celebrating 30 years of RWSN in 2022