Three years ago, LocalDevices Technologies Zambia did not exist.
There was no company. No registered business. No client list. Just a group of Zambian engineers and technicians working alongside Dutch environmental monitoring specialists Rainbow Sensing, and Swiss hardware producers’ Photrack installing cameras above rivers, running cables, troubleshooting connectivity in remote gorges, and learning what it actually takes to keep a live data stream running in the field.
Today, LocalDevices Technologies is a company. It has a paying client in Lunsemfwa Hydropower Company, a data supply contract with WARMA, Zambia’s Water Resources Management Authority, and five new monitoring stations contracted for installation before the end of 2026.
This is the story of how that happened.
One of the most persistent failures of internationally funded climate projects in Africa is what happens after the project ends. Equipment is installed. Local teams are trained. Handover ceremonies take place. And then, within months or years, the data stops flowing. Not because the technology failed, but because there was no local entity with the skills, the mandate, and the financial incentive to keep it running.
TEMBO Africa was determined to avoid this outcome in Zambia. Not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate design decision.
The approach: do not just install monitoring systems and train local counterparts to operate them. Create the conditions for a local business to emerge from the field activities themselves, one that would have real clients, real revenue, and a real reason to keep the infrastructure operational long after the EU grant period ends.
TEMBO Africa’s river monitoring work in Zambia centred on camera-based discharge measurement, a method developed through the OpenRiverCam open-source software platform and commercialised through the ORC-OS (OpenRiverCam Operating System) interface built by Rainbow Sensing.
The principle is straightforward: a weatherproof camera is mounted above a river, pointed at the water surface. Software analyses the movement of the surface, floating debris, ripples, foam, and converts that movement into a precise discharge measurement. No equipment enters the water. No staff need to stand in a river during flood conditions. The system runs automatically, transmitting data every 15 minutes.
Over the course of the TEMBO project, the Zambian team deployed this technology across multiple sites.
The Mazyopa Bridge station on the Ngwerere River in Lusaka was installed for WARMA, delivering 15-minute discharge data continuously since September 2025, including recording extreme flow velocities of over 6 metres per second during high-flow events that would be near-impossible to measure safely with conventional instruments.
Stations at Mulungushi Diversion Dam and Mukankamano tributary were deployed for Lunsemfwa Hydropower Company, providing hydrological data for operational reservoir management.
A bathymetric survey of Ray Reservoir near Lusaka mapped the full underwater topography of the reservoir using a consumer fish finder and a GNSS positioning unit from a boat, at a total equipment cost of under EU1,000. A spinoff project funded by WMO allowed to expand and professionalize the method to merge UAV terrain information with the consumer fishfinder information, and establish a bill of materials and full guidelines for professional use.
With each installation, the Zambian team did not just complete a task. They built expertise. They learnt which connectivity solutions worked in remote gorges with poor mobile coverage. They understood how to calibrate the cameras, interpret the data, and troubleshoot problems without calling in a European engineer. They became, in the truest sense of the phrase, the people who know how this works.
The formalisation of LocalDevices Technologies Zambia as an independent business emerged from that accumulated expertise.
Financially, this was supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, under the Partners for Water programme, who funded an additional spinoff project from TEMBO, for investigating market readiness and feasibility, a business model, and products, suitable for the Zambian context.
This project was conducted with Rainbow Sensing and Photrack AG, who recognised that the most sustainable outcome for TEMBO’s Zambia infrastructure was not a handover to a government department, but the creation of a private company with commercial incentives to maintain quality and reliability. TEMBO created the context, first possible clients and sensor solutions for this achievement.
Rainbow Sensing developed a payment service model specifically to support organisations like LocalDevices: an 8-hour support package combined with a ready-to-use software image for the ORC-OS system, delivered through a dedicated website (https://openrivercam.org) that allows local entrepreneurs to receive technical support and software updates as they bring on new clients.
The result is a company that is genuinely independent of the TEMBO project. Not a project deliverable, not a grant recipient, not a beneficiary of ongoing subsidies, but a Zambian business with Zambian clients and Zambian revenue.
“TEMBO provided the key context, sensor development, local presence and client contact to try out this new business model. With support of the Partners for Water programme, we were able to found a local company and develop the ORC-OS application which is the cornerstone for local independent use of open-source operational image-based discharge estimation” – Hessel Winsemius, director of Rainbow Sensing
LocalDevices Technologies Zambia provides three core services, all built on technology developed and proven through TEMBO Africa.
Lunsemfwa Hydropower Company is their anchor client, with 5 new camera stations contracted for the 2026 season. WARMA receives real-time data from the Mazyopa Bridge station on the Ngwerere River as a direct service from LocalDevices, not from TEMBO Africa, not from Rainbow Sensing, but from a Zambian company doing Zambian work.
LocalDevices Technologies Zambia is positioned as the operational foundation for TEMBO Africa’s continued presence in Zambia after the EU project ends. Beyond the existing client relationships, the company is being considered as the starting point for expanding the bathymetry service model into Kenya with TAHMO and KMSA, where KenGen has expressed interest in reservoir mapping.
Rainbow Sensing, together with SEBA Hydrometrie, is also bringing the full ORC-OS plus PtBox hardware combination to commercial market readiness in September 2026, with LocalDevices as one of the first independent commercial operators of the complete system. As the ORC ecosystem is opened to local entrepreneurs through web-based interfacing and support contracts, LocalDevices represents precisely the kind of organisation the platform was designed for.
Furthermore , LocalDevices continues to develop Bathymetry as a service product in collaboration with OpenDroneMap.
The story of LocalDevices Technologies is not really about cameras or river flow or software. It is about what happens when a funded project makes local commercial viability a design priority rather than a reporting metric.
Most project evaluations count training sessions delivered, manuals produced, and handover ceremonies completed. TEMBO Africa’s measure of success in Zambia is simpler: when the EU grant ends in 2026, will the data still be flowing?
For the Ngwerere River, for WARMA, for Lunsemfwa Hydropower Company, the answer is yes. Because a Zambian company will be making sure of it.
