Treated water kiosks in Bukavu and South Kivu: the catalytic-capital worked example, and the portfolio's hardest integrity question.
Asili's kiosks have covered their own operating costs from water sales since 2019, so the honest cost-effectiveness question is not "what does delivery cost" but what does one-time rehabilitation capital buy. This page models exactly that, and it also puts the portfolio's highest credit yield under the integrity lens rather than around it.
A Congolese social enterprise, majority-owned by the Eastern Congo Initiative, operating staffed water kiosks selling treated water in Bukavu and surrounding South Kivu. 69 kiosks operate today, serving roughly 80,000 people; the program acquired a majority of Mercy Corps' Bukavu water system as that funder exited, and the rehabilitation of the 91-kiosk Mazigiro network is underway. The program targets 650,000 people served by 2029. Kiosk water sales have covered full operating costs since the first quarter of 2019.
Virridy prefinances 200,000 carbon credits at $5 per credit, paid across five milestone tranches: $1,000,000 that covers 83.4% of the $1,199,450 Mazigiro rehabilitation budget, with Asili funding the remainder. If DR Congo grants a national Article 6 authorization, deliveries earn a further $10 per credit. The carbon mechanism is expansion capital for a self-sustaining operation, and the model treats it that way rather than claiming credit for the whole system.
Frame discipline: every $/DALY on this page divides by the $1.2M rehabilitation budget, the philanthropic and catalytic cost. Ongoing delivery is beneficiary-financed through tariffs and is excluded, which makes these figures structurally more favorable than a full-delivery-cost model like the Rwanda page's $6,822/DALY. The two frames answer different questions and are never to be compared without this label.
Unlike the school program, kiosks serve whole communities including children under five, so the randomized mortality-relevant evidence applies and the health value per dollar is far higher.
Why the health economics are so strong here: the denominator is one-time catalytic capital rather than a decade of delivery cost, and the beneficiary population includes under-fives, where diarrheal mortality concentrates. The honest caveats run the other way and are itemized in the worksheet: nearly every health input is a flagged judgment pending country-data lookups, the population target is unresolved (650,000 program target vs a 150,000 crediting cap in the current purchase agreement), and the credit yield awaits methodology reconstruction.
The complete v1 workbook: every input with its provenance, every calculation, every scenario.
| Series | 2025 | 2026 | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | 2032 | 2033 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population served | 80,000 | 222,500 | 365,000 | 507,500 | 650,000 | 650,000 | 650,000 | 650,000 | 650,000 | 4,425,000 person-yrs |
| Credits (tCO₂e) | 0 | 5,940 | 10,890 | 52,470 | 169,290 | 218,790 | 218,790 | 218,790 | 218,790 | 1,113,750 |
The proforma carries the population endpoints (80,000 today; 650,000 by 2029); the 2026–2028 ramp is linearly interpolated here and flagged. Prefinance tranches: $175,000 / 35,000 credits, $325,000 / 65,000, $250,000 / 50,000, $200,000 / 40,000, $50,000 / 10,000. Contracted backstop: 142,560 credits (scenario S5). Implied yield 0.252 credits per person-year, consistent with the booked 0.243.
| Virridy carbon advance | $1,000,000 | Proforma input 200,000 credits at $5, five milestone tranches; 83.4% of the rehab budget |
| Asili share | $199,450 | Proforma input |
| TOTAL_PROGRAMME_COST (Mazigiro rehabilitation) | $1,199,450 | Formula the single denominator; $0.271 per beneficiary-year |
Excluded, by design and stated on every figure: ongoing operating cost (beneficiary-financed through kiosk tariffs since Q1 2019) and pre-2025 capital. This is what makes the frame catalytic rather than full-delivery-cost. The build fails programmatically if any downstream figure divides by a different cost.
| Input | Value | Provenance | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under-five population share | 18% | Judgment · flagged | DRC demographic profile; census data pending. |
| Under-five all-cause death rate | 14 / 1,000 child-yrs | Judgment · flagged | DRC elevated relative to region; UN IGME lookup pending. |
| Diarrheal share of under-five deaths | 9% | Judgment · flagged | GBD cause-fraction lookup pending. |
| Mortality reduction from safe water | 12% | Evidence-anchored | Conservative (GiveWell-style); the Kremer et al. meta-analytic 25% runs as scenario S1. |
| Years of life lost per under-five death | 33 | Evidence-anchored | Standard discounted YLL. |
| Diarrheal incidence, under-five / over-five | 0.9 / 0.35 per yr | Judgment · flagged | GBD lookups pending. |
| Morbidity reduction, piped treated supply | 30% | Evidence-anchored | Wolf et al. 2022 (Lancet). |
| Delivery effectiveness (kiosk water safe) | 85% | Judgment · flagged | Site-level continuous monitoring build-out pending; the portfolio's pooled monitored-safe rate is 90%. |
| Household use share of kiosk water | 75% | Judgment · flagged | No household survey yet. Effective coverage = 0.85 × 0.75 = 0.64. |
| YLD per diarrheal episode | 0.002215 DALY | Formula | 0.188 disability weight × 4.3 days ÷ 365. |
| Step | Value | Computation |
|---|---|---|
| Under-five person-years | 796,500 | 4,425,000 × 18% |
| Baseline under-five diarrheal deaths in window | 1,004 | 796,500 × 0.014 × 9% |
| Deaths averted | 76.8 | 1,004 × 12% × 0.64 effective coverage |
| Mortality DALYs (years of life lost) | 2,534 | 76.8 × 33 |
| Baseline diarrheal episodes, all ages | 1,986,825 | 796,500 × 0.9 + 3,628,500 × 0.35 |
| Episodes averted | 379,980 | × 30% × 0.64 |
| Morbidity DALYs (years lived with disability) | 842 | × 0.002215 |
| Total DALYs averted, raw | 3,375 | mortality dominates 3:1 |
| $ / DALY, raw (philanthropic) | $355 | $1,199,450 ÷ 3,375 |
| Evidence adjustment (section E) | × 0.314 | 3,375 → 1,058 DALYs adjusted |
| $ / DALY, evidence-adjusted (philanthropic) | $1,133 | $1,199,450 ÷ 1,058 |
| xCash, GiveWell / egalitarian / wellbeing | 1.93× / 0.84× / 3.02× | DALY moral weights 2.3 / 1.0 / 3.6; benchmark 0.00335 units/$ |
| xCash, moral-uncertainty weighted | 1.99× | 0.45 / 0.25 / 0.30 prior; ranking stable across frameworks |
Conversion note: valuing a death averted as 33 YLL × 2.3 units per DALY yields about 76 units, slightly below the ~117 GiveWell assigns an under-five death directly, so the conversion is mildly conservative.
| Factor | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Internal validity | 0.70 | No program-specific outcome study; the chain is assembled from literature values. |
| External validity | 0.70 | Meta-analytic evidence transferred to the Bukavu kiosk context. |
| Publication bias | 0.80 | Systematic-review base. |
| Implementation quality | 0.80 | Operating and self-financing since 2019; continuous monitoring build-out pending. |
| Composite | 0.314 | Formula product of the four; reported alongside raw, never silently multiplied in. |
| Booked credit yield | 0.243 / person-yr | Hard flag The portfolio's highest, fNRB-adjusted, and it predates the Gold Standard SDWS V2.0 reconstruction, which cut the Rwanda program's yield by roughly 45%. Reconstruction pending. |
| Baseline-practice residual | 0.55 | Judgment · flagged Prices the reconstruction risk explicitly rather than waiting for it. |
| Delivery effectiveness | 0.85 | The same cell the health chain uses. One delivery number, two consumers. |
| Credit integrity ratio | 0.47 | Formula 0.55 × 0.85 × 1.00 leakage |
| $ / tonne, credited basis | $1.08 | $1,199,450 ÷ 1,113,750 t · 172× below the $185 SCC (philanthropic cost basis) |
| $ / tonne, integrity-adjusted | $2.30 | ÷ (1,113,750 × 0.47) · 80× below the SCC |
| Self-sustainability | tariff-funded | Kiosk sales have covered operating costs since Q1 2019; carbon is expansion capital, not survival. This strengthens sustainability and sharpens the additionality question, and the model says both. |
| Scenario | Varied input | DALYs | $ / DALY (phil.) | xCash GW | xCash MU | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base case | — | 3,375 | $355 | 1.93× | 1.99× | conservative 12% mortality effect |
| S1 · Kremer meta-analytic mortality | 25% | 6,120 | $196 | 3.50× | 3.60× | the upper evidence anchor |
| S2 · integrity low | 0.35 | — | $3.08/t | 60× SCC | carbon-side; health unchanged | |
| S3 · integrity high | 0.70 | — | $1.54/t | 120× SCC | carbon-side | |
| S4 · population at crediting cap | 150,000 | 976 | $1,229 | 0.56× | 0.57× | the 150K purchase-agreement cap vs the 650K program target; the unresolved discrepancy, priced |
| S5 · contracted credit book only | 142,560 cr | — | $8.41/t | 22× SCC | carbon-side floor: even the contracted book alone clears the SCC test by 22× | |
| S6 · Article 6 upside counted as cost | +$2.0M | 3,375 | $948 | 0.72× | 0.74× | the +$10/credit LOA payment on the 200,000 advance, if scored as philanthropic cost; in practice it is funded from credit value on delivery |
Recomputed robustness statement: the climate finding is robust everywhere (10× below SCC at worst). The health finding spans $196 to $1,229 per DALY across scenarios, and the single input that most moves it is the population question, which the purchase agreement itself will resolve before the fourth tranche.
| Dimension | Rating | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Effect-size quality | No program-specific outcome study; every health input except the two literature effect sizes is a flagged judgment pending DRC data lookups. Preliminary status is required, and the composite adjustment (0.314) says so quantitatively. | |
| Counterfactual robustness | Health-side funging is low: the prior institutional funder exited and Asili absorbed its system. The sharper question is carbon-side additionality: tariffs already fund operations, so the advance finances expansion, not survival. It covers 83.4% of a budget with no evident alternative financier, but v2 must test that claim rather than assume it. | |
| Moral-weight transparency | All frameworks reported; ranking stable; the death-to-DALY conversion is mildly conservative relative to GiveWell's direct valuation. | |
| Attribution and integrity | Attribution is clean (the cost basis includes both parties' shares). Integrity is the headline issue: the 0.243 yield is the portfolio's highest and pre-reconstruction; the 0.47 integrity ratio prices that risk, and the 150,000 vs 650,000 population discrepancy is carried as a scenario, not a footnote. | |
| Excluded factors | Excluded: tariff-financed operating cost (the frame choice, labeled on every figure); time savings; non-diarrheal waterborne disease; pre-2025 capital. The frame itself flatters $/DALY relative to full-delivery-cost models, which is why the label is mandatory. | |
| Ranking stability | Climate: robust in every scenario. Health: $196 to $1,229 per DALY; the population target is the decisive input, and it resolves contractually before Tranche 4. |