In 2013, Peter Macy was floating down a river in Africa when he heard the news: a rover had landed on Mars. Billions of dollars, years of effort to explore another planet. At the same time, roughly 2 billion people on Earth didn’t have access to safe drinking water.
“This can’t be. We have to come up with a plan.”
That moment is when ROCKBlue was conceived. Peter recently spoke with Community Engagement Specialist and Radio Host Nonceba “Noni” Radebe about why he left a successful private sector career to do something about it. Below are some highlights of the conversation:
Why cities, not villages
When people picture the water crisis, they often picture a rural village. ROCKBlue deliberately went the other way. Peter gives three reasons: migration, growth rates, and where infrastructure is failing fastest, and the numbers are more shocking than you’d expect.
The “19 challenges”
Take a brilliant utility manager from London or New York and drop them into Nairobi. Peter refers to what they’d suddenly face as the “19 challenges” and argues it’s unfair to judge utilities in the Global South by the same standard without naming them first.
A woman in Lusaka
To explain why this is a life problem, not just a water problem, Peter tells the story of a woman in Lusaka whose tap stopped running, and what it meant for her child and her small business. It turns a statistic: 1.4 million deaths a year from unsafe water, back into a person.
“We’re navigating a rover on Mars. We can solve this, and we have to solve this.”
“We’ll be here as long as you want us”
Most aid is short-term. ROCKBlue made a promise that sounded almost reckless: to stay with a utility indefinitely. Peter explains how a network of roughly 150 volunteer specialists makes that possible. He also shares a small, telling story about a water treatment plant in Tanzania that sat dry two years after it opened.
1.8 Million urban residents
Since 2016, ROCKBlue’s utility partners have expanded access to water and sanitation to an additional 1.8 million urban residents, not through new infrastructure, but through stronger institutions. Peter insists ROCKBlue itself shouldn’t get the credit.
What still gets Peter out of bed each morning?
After more than a decade, and everything it’s cost him, Noni asks the question everyone’s wondering.
Hear the full interview below:
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