Mexico 1 – Sibonise | Show us the leak!

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Every year, half of South Africa’s treated water is lost before it reaches a tap. SIBONISE combines citizen reporting, AI-powered analysis, and a scalable Progressive Web App to detect hidden leaks, prioritize repairs, and reward community action — making water management faster, smarter, and more inclusive.

About us

Where the Water Goes Missing

Before we could propose a solution, we had to face a harsh truth: South Africa’s water crisis is not just about scarcity — it’s about loss. Every year, nearly half of all treated water simply disappears before it ever reaches a tap. Beneath streets, behind walls, and across vast networks of aging infrastructure, invisible leaks waste billions of liters daily. Municipalities struggle to monitor thousands of kilometers of pipelines, while citizens, the ones who see leaks first, remain disconnected from the system that could fix them. This is where the problem — and our opportunity — begins.

Scale of the Problem

• South Africa loses ~50% of its treated water every year.
• That’s equivalent to 1.6 billion cubic meters annually — enough to supply millions of households.
• Direct cost: billions of rand wasted each year, draining municipal budgets and weakening water security.

Cost of Inaction

• 38% of losses are “real” leaks that go undetected, slowly wasting more water than visible bursts.
• A single burst can spill 30,000 liters per hour; hidden leaks accumulate into even bigger long-term losses.
• With demand rising and climate shocks intensifying, these losses lead to:
  • Service interruptions for citizens.
  • Financial strain on utilities.
  • Erosion of trust between communities and municipalities.

The Opportunity

• Citizens are the first to see leaks — but today, they aren’t engaged as part of the solution.
• Municipalities spend heavily on detection and repair, yet lack the resources to monitor every street.
• If we equip people with simple, digital tools, we can:
  • Turn millions of eyes into a real-time leak detection network.
  • Reduce water and financial losses significantly.
  • Strengthen collaboration between citizens and utilities.

In short: the problem is massive, costly, and urgent — but solvable with the right technology and behavioural shift.

Our Solution

Sibonise (isiZulu for “Show us”) is a Progressive Web App (PWA) for citizens and a smart AI-powered dashboard for municipalities and sponsors— designed to turn leak detection into a transparent, inclusive, and data-driven process.

Before diving into each feature, this overview map illustrates how SIBONISE works as a connected, self-sustaining ecosystem. From community awareness to real-time reporting, AI-driven decision-making, on-site repairs, and sponsor-funded rewards — every element is designed to reinforce the others.

Together, these interactions create a transparent, inclusive, and scalable system that turns citizen participation into measurable urban resilience.

The following sections explore each component in detail.

Citizen App

Why a Progressive Web App (PWA)?

Unlike traditional apps, our Progressive Web App (PWA) removes download barriers and runs smoothly on any device while using minimal storage. It’s offline-first, allowing reports to be submitted without internet and automatically synced when connected. Always up to date, with no manual updates required, and cross-platform (Android, iOS, desktop), it is inclusive, lightweight, and ideal for regions with low connectivity. Crucially, the PWA enables fixed-cost scalability: governments pay a single maintenance fee, independent of user volume, making it far more cost-effective at scale than per-message or per-user models.

Because SIBONISE runs on its own PWA, we can show sponsors inside the app, automate rewards, and deliver analytics — benefits you don’t get with WhatsApp/SMS.

How It Works

Let’s walk through the app experience, step by step:

SIBONISE turns leak detection into a collaborative, educational, and rewarding experience.

Rewards-Driven Engagement

A Rewards System, fully financed by sponsors, motivates citizen participation by turning community reporting into a positive daily habit. Users earn grocery vouchers, mobile data, airtime, or branded products from partners such as Coca-Cola, Amazon, or local telecom companies. This transforms reporting from a chore into a habit sustained by tangible benefits, fostering long-term engagement and community pride.

Unlike WhatsApp or SMS reporting systems, SIBONISE is our own platform — allowing sponsor rewards, brand visibility, and impact analytics to exist directly inside the app. Citizens receive real incentives from verified brands, while sponsors gain measurable visibility, performance data, and authentic community engagement.

For citizens, SIBONISE promotes modern, locally tailored campaigns rooted in Ubuntu (“I am because we are”), creating a sense of belonging and shared responsibility.

For sponsors, it offers structured visibility through logos, branded rewards, and in-app campaigns linked to measurable social and environmental impact. As adoption expands across cities, sponsor exposure grows exponentially, making every partnership both socially valuable and strategically rewarding.

Inclusivity & Accessibility

SIBONISE is designed to be truly inclusive, ensuring that every citizen — regardless of age, literacy level, or connectivity — can participate in protecting their community’s water resources.

Security, Ethics & Anti-Abuse

SIBONISE integrates transparent, ethical, and responsible AI principles to ensure trust, safety, and accountability across the entire system.

Smart Dashboard

The SIBONISE Smart Dashboard is the intelligence core of the entire system — where citizen-generated data meets artificial intelligence to produce actionable insights for municipalities, sponsors, and communities. It integrates computer vision, natural language processing, spatial analytics, and predictive modeling to transform thousands of unstructured reports into real-time, data-driven decisions.

Unlike traditional municipal tools that simply record incidents, SIBONISE’s AI actively analyzes, prioritizes, and learns from every report. Each user submission — whether a photo or video — feeds a continuous learning feedback loop that refines accuracy, predicts future risks, and enhances operational efficiency across the entire water management system

How it Works

Operations Dashboard for Municipalities

The Operations Dashboard unifies all core monitoring tools of SIBONISE: Operations Overview, AI Duplicate & False Report Detection, Community Impact Dashboard, and Content Management Dashboard. Together, they create an end-to-end system powered by AI — detecting leaks, validating reports, tracking community engagement, and managing educational content in multiple languages.

It’s where municipalities gain full visibility, automate response decisions, and transform real-time citizen data into coordinated, citywide action.

Impact Dashboard for Sponsors

The Impact Dashboard gives sponsors a transparent view of their contribution and community reach. AI links every campaign and reward to measurable outcomes: liters of water saved, citizens engaged, and regions impacted.

Through real-time analytics and behavioral insights, sponsors can track visibility, optimize campaigns, and quantify their social and environmental return on investment (ROI) — all within one platform.

AI Functionality in the Dashboard: How AI Turns Data into Action

1. Automated Classification & Severity Scoring

• Computer Vision (TensorFlow / AutoML Vision) analyzes photos and videos to distinguish leaks from bursts and estimate flow intensity.
• Natural Language Processing (HuggingFace Transformers) interprets text and voice transcriptions, detecting urgency keywords such as “street flooded” or “main line burst.”
• The system combines these signals to assign a Severity Score (S1–S5), which determines priority in the operator’s queue.

2. Spatial & Behavioral Intelligence

The dashboard connects AI outputs with PostGIS spatial data and demographic layers to identify risk clusters — zones where recurring leaks overlap with aging infrastructure or dense populations. It also tracks behavioral trends, such as reporting peaks by hour, weekday, or weather condition (using OpenWeatherMap API), allowing the city to plan maintenance dynamically.

3. Duplicate Detection & False Report Detection

Using ResNet image similarity and semantic analysis, the system flags duplicate or suspicious reports, displaying a confidence level and suggested action (merge, verify, or reject). This automation maintains data quality and saves operators up to 70% of manual verification time.

4. Predictive Forecasting & Preventive Maintenance

Once enough validated data is collected, time-series models (Prophet / ARIMA) and XGBoost classifiers forecast where leaks are most likely to occur next. The dashboard visualizes these predictions as heatmaps of potential failures, allowing for preemptive maintenance and resource allocation — shifting cities from reactive repair to preventive resilience.

5. Continuous Learning Feedback Loop

Each confirmed repair, SLA completion, or citizen upvote feeds back into the AI training dataset. The system adjusts its model weights automatically, improving accuracy with every cycle. This creates a closed learning loop where the more the app is used, the smarter the system becomes.

The outcome:

• Faster detection and repair times
• Lower operational costs
• Verified, high-quality data
• Predictive insight into future failures
• Stronger trust between citizens and institutions

SIBONISE’s AI doesn’t just make leak management efficient — it makes it intelligent, human-centered, and sustainably scalable.

Scalable, Cost-Effective & Sustainable

SIBONISE is designed as a self-sustaining ecosystem — technically scalable, economically efficient, and socially reinforced through sponsor participation.

• Its Progressive Web App (PWA) architecture provides universal access on any device, requiring no downloads or updates, minimizing maintenance effort, and enabling inclusive adoption at scale.
• The platform operates under a fixed-cost model, where governments pay a single maintenance fee independent of user volume or number of reports. This ensures predictable budgeting and long-term financial sustainability.
• Cloud-native, serverless infrastructure (AWS/GCP) enables automatic scaling of processing and storage capacity as participation grows, maintaining performance without additional infrastructure or personnel costs.
• AI automation streamlines classification, validation, and prioritization, reducing manual workload and allowing the system to handle exponential growth efficiently.
• Meanwhile, a sponsor-funded rewards model sustains citizen engagement and offsets program costs. Brands finance incentives — grocery vouchers, mobile data, or airtime — while gaining measurable visibility and impact through integrated dashboards.

This closed economic loop keeps participation active and the platform self-financing, without dependence on external funding cycles.

In essence, SIBONISE merges fixed-cost scalability, cloud efficiency, AI automation, and sponsor-powered rewards into a resilient, self-sustaining infrastructure — designed to grow sustainably, perform reliably, and deliver lasting value to both cities and communities.

Scaling Sibonise Across Africa

Guided by an Ubuntu-inspired vision, the five-year implementation plan moves from a pilot in Cape Town to a continental presence, combining technology, community, and sustainability. Each phase balances local adaptation with systemic growth: testing, learning, and refining in early stages, while expanding reach, deepening citizen engagement, and building sponsor ecosystems.

The estimated number of reports was calculated using data from Johannesburg’s municipal water losses, as documented by the Department of Water and Sanitation (2023), and extrapolated to other major metropolitan areas.

Scalable Impact Model: How SIBONISE Sustains Itself and Scales Impact

SIBONISE offers a low-risk, high-impact, and financially sustainable model for both public and private stakeholders. Its fixed-cost structure, AI automation, and sponsor-funded incentives make water resilience not just a public necessity, but a financially viable, measurable, and inclusive solution.

Government Investment Model

An initial setup cost of USD $10,800 covers configuration and launch of the Progressive Web App (PWA), depreciated over three years. Municipalities then pay a fixed monthly maintenance fee of USD $135, ensuring predictable budgeting and cost control.

In the first year, the implementation will begin in Cape Town, marking the pilot phase of the project. In the first month, with 237 reports, the effective cost per report amounts to approximately USD $0.57 (USD $135 / 237). However, thanks to the scalability of the PWA, the bar chart shows how by year five —with presence in 11 cities— the number of monthly reports is projected to reach 2,583, while the monthly maintenance cost remains unchanged. This reduces the effective cost per report to about USD $0.05 (USD $135 / 2,583), highlighting the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the solution over time.

Private or CSR Sponsorship Feasibility

Even if a government chooses not to fund the program directly, SIBONISE remains cost-competitive for private sponsors, NGOs, or foundations. With an average maintenance cost of only $135 per city per month, a single company could fully fund deployment as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy.

Several multinational companies already demonstrate strong precedents for investing in similar initiatives:

• The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation – Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN): Over $30 million invested in water access projects across 35 African countries, reaching more than 6 million people.
• Coca-Cola Water Stewardship Initiative (2024): Additional $25 million dedicated to community water resilience programs.
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: More than $2.5 billion invested globally in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs, including large-scale projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania. In 2023, the foundation committed $100 million to expand sanitation access in Africa and Asia through climate-resilient urban infrastructure.
• JBP Trenchless (Uganda): Sponsored local well construction for rural communities.
• Arctic Amanzi (South Africa): Provides regular water donations to hospitals and rural areas.

These examples confirm that private-sector and philanthropic investment in water security is both feasible and desirable, offering measurable community benefits, brand visibility, and alignment with global sustainability goals.

Sponsor Integration and Shared Value

How Sponsorship Scales with Impact

In Year 1, SIBONISE starts with five sponsors contributing $1,000 each per month (a total of $5,000). After covering an agency fee of $3,000, the remaining $2,000 is distributed as rewards — averaging $8.44 per verified report from an estimated 237 monthly reports.

By Year 5, as adoption and sponsor visibility grow, participation expands to at least 20 sponsors contributing $20,000 monthly. With an updated agency fee of $3,500, the reward pool rises to $16,500, distributed across roughly 2,583 monthly reports, averaging $6.39 per verified report — maintaining engagement while scaling sustainably.

• Early stage → smaller user base, fewer reports, but higher reward per individual report.
• Growth stage → larger user base leads to higher sponsor visibility, more sponsors, and greater total reward funds. While the reward per report decreases, the overall impact and financial sustainability of the system increase.

Beyond Water — Scalable by Design

While SIBONISE was designed to address water leaks, its modular framework can easily expand to other civic challenges. The same model — citizen reporting + AI processing + public action + sponsor engagement — can be adapted to issues like waste management, pollution monitoring, or traffic optimization.

Each application follows the same sustainable logic: empowering people, driving transparency, and turning collective action into measurable urban impact.

Why It Works

SIBONISE combines the scalability of digital infrastructure with the simplicity of fixed-cost deployment.
Its blended funding model — government + private sponsorship — ensures resilience even when one actor slows down, creating long-term stability in impact and financing.

Sustainable Business Model Canvas

The following Business Model Canvas summarizes how value is created, delivered, and sustained across citizens, governments, and sponsors — turning leak detection into a scalable model for social and environmental impact.

Show us! – Launch Campaign: Turning Awareness Into Action

Before any leak is reported, people must first care enough to act.

This strategy defines the Launch Campaign, the first step to drive adoption — showing how we’ll motivate citizens to discover, trust, and start using SIBONISE.

Our goal is to build awareness and early engagement through storytelling, gamification, and local partnerships, making participation simple, rewarding, and visible.

All campaign details and communication materials are presented in the full document attached below.

Impact

Across South Africa, millions of liters of clean water disappear every day through unnoticed leaks — not because people don’t care, but because they lack the means to act. Sibonise changes that.

As an AI-powered civic-tech platform, it gives citizens a simple way to report leaks, track progress, and see their collective impact — transforming awareness into tangible action.

By combining AI validation, gamified incentives, and an inclusive multilingual design, Sibonise redefines how communities and institutions collaborate for sustainability.

It doesn’t replace the system — it activates a movement.

What Citizens Think: Insights that Shaped Sibonise

Every element of Sibonise was built from real citizen insights. Over several months, we conducted two surveys to understand how people perceive water loss, what would motivate them to report leaks, and how they experience our digital prototype.

Listening to Citizens

Our first survey gathered responses from over 60 participants, revealing that while most people care deeply about water, awareness of the scale of the problem remains fragmented:

• Only half could clearly distinguish between a leak and a burst pipe.
• When asked how much water they believed was lost through leaks, answers ranged from 1% to 40% of total supply — revealing how invisible the real scale of water loss can be.

Still, the readiness to act was clear:

Testing the Prototype

A second user study with 30 participants tested our Sibonise prototype — a nine-screen simulation of the reporting process. Participants described it as “intuitive,” “organized,” and “motivating.”

Opportunities for Improvement

While the prototype received highly positive feedback, participants also identified meaningful opportunities to make Sibonise even more user-centered and scalable:

• Simplify dense screens for quicker reading on mobile.
• Unify visual hierarchy to make navigation smoother.
• Improve map and upload speed for real-time reporting.
• Add instant feedback after submitting a report.
• Show community impact stories to keep users inspired.

These improvements will help Sibonise evolve from a functional prototype into a highly intuitive, emotionally engaging civic-tech platform.

What Makes It Innovative

SIBONISE combines social innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) to create a smarter, fairer, and more sustainable way to manage water. It connects citizens, municipalities, and sponsors through a digital ecosystem where community participation and advanced analytics work together to detect and prevent leaks.

Developed as a Progressive Web App (PWA), SIBONISE is scalable, inclusive, and cost-effective. It runs on any device without downloads, works offline-first, and charges cities a single flat maintenance fee regardless of user volume — a major advantage over per-message or per-user systems. The interface is multilingual and features a voice mode for people who cannot read, ensuring that everyone, regardless of literacy level or connectivity, can contribute to preserving their city’s water.

At its core, SIBONISE integrates AI and machine learning to classify leaks, estimate severity, predict risk zones, and optimize repair routes. It continuously learns from patterns — such as time, location, and environmental conditions — to help municipalities reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and improve their response times.

To sustain engagement, the app features a Rewards System fully financed by sponsors. Citizens who report verified leaks earn grocery vouchers, mobile data, airtime, or branded rewards (e.g., Coca-Cola, Amazon, or telecom companies). This transforms leak reporting from a chore into a habit driven by tangible benefits, building long-term participation and community pride. Sponsors gain visibility directly within the app and access to impact metrics through the municipal dashboard, showcasing their social and environmental contribution.

Because SIBONISE operates on its own PWA platform, it can securely integrate these features — AI analytics, citizen data, and sponsor interaction — in a unified environment. This independence offers a key advantage over third-party messaging systems: full control over user experience, data integrity, and feature customization, allowing the platform to evolve and scale sustainably.

Beyond being a digital tool, it’s a feasible, desirable, and viable solution — proving that civic innovation can be both scalable and sustainable when it aligns empathy with engineering.

In short, SIBONISE connects citizens, governments, and sponsors through technology and shared value, creating a water management ecosystem that is smarter, more equitable, and built to last.

References

Arctic Amanzi. (n.d.). Social responsibility. https://www.arcticamanzi.co.za/social.htmlarcticamanzi.co.za

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2023). Water, sanitation, and hygiene strategy overview. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-growth-and-opportunity/water-sanitation-and-hygiene

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2023, September 13). New commitments to improve sanitation access in Africa and Asia. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/clean-water-and-sanitation-access

Department of Water and Sanitation. (2023). No Drop Report 2023: Water conservation and demand management performance of South African municipalities. Republic of South Africa. https://www.dws.gov.za/sites/default/files/reports/NoDrop2023.pdf

JBP Trenchless. (n.d.). Sponsorship of a water project in Uganda. https://jbptrenchless.com/en/sponsorship-of-a-water-project-in-uganda/

The Coca-Cola Company. (2024, September 13). The Coca-Cola System in Africa Unveils Water Stewardship Initiative. https://www.coca-cola.com/xe/en/media-center/water-stewardship-initiative

The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation. (n.d.). Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN). CEO Water Mandate. https://ceowatermandate.org/resources/replenish-africa-initiative-rain/