Is there a global water crisis, and what happens when the world’s most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, builds 100 wells across Africa?
In this episode, we explore some of the reasons why billions of people around the world still don't have access to clean water, and look at what happens when a Western influencer becomes involved.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about water.
[00:00:26] And more specifically, we’ll be talking about the most popular YouTuber in the world, MrBeast, and what has been called “the global water crisis”.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of celebrity, politics, geography, poverty, mismanagement, technology, and the liquid that every human needs to survive.
[00:00:49] OK then, let’s get right into it, and talk about MrBeast and the global water crisis.
[00:00:57] In November of 2023, the world’s most popular YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson, a man you are more likely to know by the name “MrBeast”, released a video titled “I Built 100 Wells in Africa.”
[00:01:15] It went instantly viral, and as of the time of recording, it has racked up over a quarter of a billion views.
[00:01:26] In the video, you see MrBeast and his team standing in villages across Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Cameroon, and Somalia, unveiling freshly built wells surrounded by cheering crowds.
[00:01:41] There are smiling children, colourful celebrations, and people clapping as clean water gushes out from a tap for the very first time.
[00:01:52] The tone of the video is upbeat and dramatic–this is a channel known for spectacle, after all–but the message is clear: access to water is life-changing, life-saving, even.
[00:02:08] Before, as you see in the video, these communities had to trudge for hours every day to get water, often across mountains, rivers, and dangerous terrain.
[00:02:20] And even after all this, it was often contaminated, dirty water that would make them sick, even kill them.
[00:02:30] Clearly, a pretty terrible situation, and a small insight into the reality of the estimated 1,000 children under the age of five who die every single day through diseases related to a lack of clean water.
[00:02:47] But after the arrival of this American YouTuber and his crew, beautiful fresh drinking water could be pumped from the ground, for free.
[00:02:59] MrBeast claimed that these wells would provide water for half a million people and, with the proper maintenance, could last for 30 years.
[00:03:11] The video was made in the classic MrBeast style: over-the-top animations, short and punchy.
[00:03:18] But it was one of his more serious subjects, and the comment section was flooded with people congratulating him, saying what a good thing he had done, and how this was a much more worthwhile use of his time than giving people money for staying in a circle or pressing buttons.
[00:03:38] After all, what happened was uplifting, inspiring, hopeful.
[00:03:44] And, if this meant that 500,000 people who previously didn’t have clean water now had it, surely this was a good thing?
[00:03:55] But, as you might imagine, it rubbed some people up the wrong way.
[00:04:00] And it raised some important questions.
[00:04:04] Why did it take a YouTuber to solve this problem?
[00:04:08] Why does a man who made his name giving away Lamborghinis and filming last-man-standing challenges now find himself doing something that you might think governments, NGOs, or international institutions should have done a long time ago?
[00:04:26] And, as we’ll come to discuss later on, is he actually solving anything at all?
[00:04:33] So, to the first set of questions, why did it take a celebrity YouTuber to solve this problem and why did these villages not have pumps like this many years ago?
[00:04:46] We’re not talking about high-speed internet or access to university education or cutting-edge cancer treatments.
[00:04:54] We’re talking about water, the most basic of basic needs, something that no human being can live more than a few days without.
[00:05:03] And what’s more, something that covers most of the Earth’s surface, literally falls from the sky, and when it doesn’t come from the sky, can be just a few metres below ground.
[00:05:15] After all, the wells MrBeast built weren’t high-tech. They don’t involve AI, space rockets or sophisticated computing.
[00:05:25] They’re just… wells.
[00:05:27] They tap into groundwater — the water stored beneath the earth’s surface — and bring it up to the surface where it can be used for drinking, washing, farming, and whatever else it might be needed for.
[00:05:42] Groundwater already existed in most of the places he visited, and it isn’t particularly complicated or expensive to bring it up to the surface.
[00:05:54] What was missing wasn’t the water; it was the infrastructure, the funding, and the political will to access it.
[00:06:03] This video, and the entire well-digging project, highlighted just a few examples of what some journalists and NGOs call the “global water crisis”, the reality that today an estimated two billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water.
[00:06:26] Of course, there are many reasons for this, and the water crisis looks different depending on where you are.
[00:06:34] But most of the problems can be grouped into four very broad buckets: geography, money, mismanagement, and neglect.
[00:06:47] Again, this is a simplification, and there isn’t always a neat and tidy division between these buckets, but it’s a useful way of thinking about the problem.
[00:06:58] So, first, geography.
[00:07:01] In some parts of the world, clearly, water is naturally scarce: for every person looking out of their kitchen window in northern Scotland wishing it would stop raining, there is another somewhere else in the world who would be over the moon to look out of their window and see the same thing.
[00:07:20] The oft-used example is Yemen, which gets an average of 17 cm of rain a year: about what some parts of the UK might get in a single month.
[00:07:32] But unlike the UK, Yemen doesn’t have the infrastructure to store and distribute water effectively.
[00:07:40] Its capital, Sana’a, is running out of water entirely, and some wells are now over a kilometre deep.
[00:07:48] There’s also another problem with water in Yemen, which has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with mismanagement, but we’ll come to that in a minute.
[00:07:59] In other places, water might exist, either underground or in seasonal rivers, but not in the right place at the right time, and without the proper facilities to store it, it simply gets washed away.
[00:08:15] The second bucket is money – having the funds to pay for the infrastructure required, whether that’s basic wells, water storage facilities, or more technologically advanced equipment like desalination facilities, where seawater is processed and turned into clean, drinkable water.
[00:08:36] The irony is that often the cost to access clean water is very low.
[00:08:43] In places where there is plentiful groundwater–like in the areas in MrBeast’s video–the water is often just a few dozen metres below the surface.
[00:08:54] It’s there, and all you need is to drill down and get it.
[00:08:59] But drilling costs money. Equipment costs money. Pipes, pumps, filters; all of this requires investment.
[00:09:08] Not a huge amount of money, but governments in many low-income countries either don’t have the funds or don’t prioritise water projects, especially in remote areas.
[00:09:21] And while international aid does help, it often comes with bureaucracy, short-term timelines, or political strings attached.
[00:09:31] So the result is this: water exists, but it remains trapped under ground, tantalisingly close, but utterly out of reach.
[00:09:43] The third bucket we can call mismanagement.
[00:09:47] Even in places where water is available, in the form of plentiful rivers or lakes, it often becomes polluted and therefore unsafe: the Ganges being a classic example.
[00:10:01] And if it isn’t polluted, it’s often used inefficiently, for things that simply aren’t a good use of limited water.
[00:10:11] Globally, around 70% of all freshwater is used for agriculture.
[00:10:18] Sure, agriculture is a perfectly good use of water in some cases, but in many countries with limited water resources, that water is diverted to grow cash crops like cotton, sugar, or avocados — crops that are water-intensive and destined for export.
[00:10:40] I told you we’d return to the other reason that there’s a water crisis in Yemen, and that’s because it is especially guilty of mismanaging its already limited groundwater.
[00:10:52] Around 40% of the country’s water supply goes to growing something called qat, which is a narcotic plant that gives you a buzz when you chew it.
[00:11:04] It has zero nutritional value, and if production were banned, or if someone waved a magic wand and all qat production stopped, Yemen’s water crisis might not quite disappear, but some serious pressure would be relieved.
[00:11:22] Now, this is an extreme example of a very poor country that has been in a state of violent civil war for over 10 years, so it would be completely unreasonable to imagine a Yemeni qat farmer should spend any time thinking about the impact his crop has on the water level, when all he is trying to do is survive.
[00:11:44] But still, qat is a major contributor to Yemen’s water supply issues.
[00:11:50] And there are plenty of other examples of countries where water is diverted towards cash crops for export rather than domestic consumption.
[00:12:01] The central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is landlocked and has limited water resources, yet it is one of the world’s largest producers of cotton, which is a particularly water-intensive crop.
[00:12:17] If you are a long time listener to this show, you might remember the role of cotton farming in the disappearance of the Aral Sea, from episode number 12. Uzbekistan diverted so much water to this thirsty crop that a large sea simply dried up and disappeared.
[00:12:37] So that’s mismanagement.
[00:12:40] The fourth and final bucket is perhaps the most frustrating of all: neglect.
[00:12:47] Because sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of water, or a lack of funds, or even active mismanagement.
[00:12:54] It’s just that nobody bothers to fix it.
[00:12:58] Water doesn’t win elections.
[00:13:00] It doesn’t attract headlines.
[00:13:02] And unlike a new road, a shiny stadium, or a government building with someone’s name on the side, it doesn’t make for good photo opportunities.
[00:13:12] So politicians and planners focus their attention elsewhere.
[00:13:18] There are also cases where water infrastructure was built — perhaps by a foreign NGO or as part of an aid project — but was then left to fall into disrepair.
[00:13:32] Pumps break. Filters clog. Pipes corrode.
[00:13:36] And because there’s no system in place to maintain them, no local expertise or cost-efficient way of replacing broken parts, the community is left with nothing.
[00:13:49] According to some estimates, between 25 and 40% of water points in sub-Saharan Africa are no longer functioning, often just a few years after installation.
[00:14:04] This is the quiet tragedy of the water crisis: it’s not always about what’s missing, it’s about what’s been forgotten.
[00:14:14] So, to recap, we have:
[00:14:16] Water that exists, but is in the wrong place.
[00:14:19] Communities that need it, but can’t afford to access it.
[00:14:23] Governments that are unable — or unwilling — to prioritise it.
[00:14:28] And domestic and international systems that are, at best, patchy and short-term in their efforts.
[00:14:37] Into this mix steps a man with a camera, a team of editors, and a couple of hundred million YouTube subscribers.
[00:14:46] He builds 100 wells, attracts heaps of praise and goodwill, and no doubt adds a few million people to his YouTube channel.
[00:14:55] Not so bad for a day’s work.
[00:14:58] Now, while the video received hundreds of thousands of positive comments, and millions more likes and shares, it also attracted a bunch of criticism.
[00:15:09] Some of it was predictable internet noise: he’s only doing it for the views, or why did he build 100 and not 1,000, or he should have built hospitals rather than wells.
[00:15:23] But some raised important ethical questions.
[00:15:28] The first line of criticism was about performative charity, the idea that MrBeast was only helping these communities on camera, for content, and ultimately for profit.
[00:15:42] After all, his YouTube videos make money.
[00:15:45] A lot of money, and even if he specified that he was giving all of the advertising revenue away to the project, and he was raising money for his water-based charity, he would still benefit indirectly from it.
[00:16:00] So, the question becomes: is this charity, or is it a business model disguised as generosity?
[00:16:08] Would these wells have been built if there were no cameras, no thumbnails, no ad revenue, no brand sponsors?
[00:16:17] A second criticism was about power and agency.
[00:16:22] Why is it that the world’s richest countries, multinational development agencies, and national governments failed to act, and a private individual, with no public accountability, stepped in instead?
[00:16:37] Is this a celebration of generosity?
[00:16:40] Or a symptom of a system that has outsourced basic public services to influencers?
[00:16:48] And there was another layer of discomfort — one that’s harder to pin down, but no less real.
[00:16:56] Some commentators felt that the video, while well-intentioned, fell into a familiar pattern:
[00:17:03] The white saviour narrative.
[00:17:06] A wealthy American flies into African villages and solves their problem with the wave of a wand, or in this case, the twist of a valve.
[00:17:17] Of course, MrBeast didn’t invent that narrative.
[00:17:21] And much to his credit, he didn’t centre himself in the video as much as someone else might have done.
[00:17:28] But for many, the format still felt uncomfortably close to a feel-good Western intervention story, where local people are recipients of generosity rather than participants in the solutions.
[00:17:44] Another common criticism, one often heard in discussions about international aid more broadly, is that giving handouts discourages self-sufficiency.
[00:17:56] That it risks creating dependency.
[00:17:59] That if people grow used to others arriving and “solving problems” for them, they may lose the incentive — or the confidence — to build these solutions themselves.
[00:18:12] How could a local well-installation company ever compete on price with “free”?
[00:18:18] And what incentive is there to solve these problems if you know that there will be handouts at some stage, even if you might need to wait a while for them.
[00:18:28] This argument is especially common among critics of foreign aid: the idea that decades of charity have created a kind of learned helplessness, where African governments and communities wait for help rather than take action.
[00:18:45] Now, although there might be some truth here, there is also a danger of oversimplification.
[00:18:52] Building infrastructure like wells does require local expertise, materials, and maintenance.
[00:18:58] And many communities do already try to build and repair water systems, with or without help. Often, they’re just missing the capital or political support to do so effectively.
[00:19:13] In MrBeast’s case, it’s worth noting that the wells were reportedly built in partnership with local contractors and NGOs, not just dropped in from above, and the ongoing maintenance and repair work of the wells will require local expertise and labour.
[00:19:31] Of course, the video doesn’t dwell on that side of things; it’s a 10-minute video intended to entertain and make you feel good, it was never going to go into the specifics of how everything was delivered and will be maintained.
[00:19:47] But this hasn’t stopped MrBeast’s critics from arguing that this video, and the entire project, creates an unbalanced picture: one where progress comes from outside, and where local people are passive recipients of foreign generosity.
[00:20:06] Now, to wrap things up, this is just one video, and these 100 wells are just a tiny step forward on the journey of securing clean, drinkable water for everyone who needs it.
[00:20:20] It did do a lot to raise awareness and money for global water projects, and showed people that getting clean water isn’t as complicated or expensive as they might have thought.
[00:20:33] According to one recent study, securing clean water for every person on the planet by 2030 could cost just 1% of global GDP - about 29 cents per person per day.
[00:20:50] It seems like a small price to pay, especially because the benefits greatly outweigh the cost, with this study suggesting that every dollar invested in water access and sanitation brings an average of $6.80 in return.
[00:21:09] If you ask me, it’s a good thing that someone with MrBeast’s reach is highlighting the problem of water access, but it certainly shouldn’t be theirs to fix, nor should they be criticised for “not doing enough”.
[00:21:23] Clearly, no single actor can solve the global water crisis alone.
[00:21:28] Governments carry the ultimate responsibility to provide safe water.
[00:21:34] NGOs and international organisations can supply resources and expertise.
[00:21:40] Local communities bring the knowledge and capacity to keep systems running.
[00:21:46] And yes, sometimes even YouTubers with vast audiences can play a part by raising awareness and mobilising funds.
[00:21:55] Charity is never a substitute for strong institutions, but when it works alongside them, it can accelerate progress.
[00:22:04] And at the end of the day, the real test isn’t whether 100 wells can be built for a YouTube video, it’s whether we can build a world where videos like this aren’t needed at all.
[00:22:19] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on MrBeast and the Global Water Crisis.
[00:22:24] If you’d like to watch the video of him digging the wells, just go to YouTube and search for “MrBeast wells” - he is the biggest YouTuber in the world and you will have no trouble finding it.
[00:22:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:39] Did you know about MrBeast before? What do you think of these kinds of massive YouTubers doing philanthropic work in their videos?
[00:22:47] Praiseworthy and good, deceptive and dangerous, or somewhere in between?
[00:22:52] you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about water.
[00:00:26] And more specifically, we’ll be talking about the most popular YouTuber in the world, MrBeast, and what has been called “the global water crisis”.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of celebrity, politics, geography, poverty, mismanagement, technology, and the liquid that every human needs to survive.
[00:00:49] OK then, let’s get right into it, and talk about MrBeast and the global water crisis.
[00:00:57] In November of 2023, the world’s most popular YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson, a man you are more likely to know by the name “MrBeast”, released a video titled “I Built 100 Wells in Africa.”
[00:01:15] It went instantly viral, and as of the time of recording, it has racked up over a quarter of a billion views.
[00:01:26] In the video, you see MrBeast and his team standing in villages across Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Cameroon, and Somalia, unveiling freshly built wells surrounded by cheering crowds.
[00:01:41] There are smiling children, colourful celebrations, and people clapping as clean water gushes out from a tap for the very first time.
[00:01:52] The tone of the video is upbeat and dramatic–this is a channel known for spectacle, after all–but the message is clear: access to water is life-changing, life-saving, even.
[00:02:08] Before, as you see in the video, these communities had to trudge for hours every day to get water, often across mountains, rivers, and dangerous terrain.
[00:02:20] And even after all this, it was often contaminated, dirty water that would make them sick, even kill them.
[00:02:30] Clearly, a pretty terrible situation, and a small insight into the reality of the estimated 1,000 children under the age of five who die every single day through diseases related to a lack of clean water.
[00:02:47] But after the arrival of this American YouTuber and his crew, beautiful fresh drinking water could be pumped from the ground, for free.
[00:02:59] MrBeast claimed that these wells would provide water for half a million people and, with the proper maintenance, could last for 30 years.
[00:03:11] The video was made in the classic MrBeast style: over-the-top animations, short and punchy.
[00:03:18] But it was one of his more serious subjects, and the comment section was flooded with people congratulating him, saying what a good thing he had done, and how this was a much more worthwhile use of his time than giving people money for staying in a circle or pressing buttons.
[00:03:38] After all, what happened was uplifting, inspiring, hopeful.
[00:03:44] And, if this meant that 500,000 people who previously didn’t have clean water now had it, surely this was a good thing?
[00:03:55] But, as you might imagine, it rubbed some people up the wrong way.
[00:04:00] And it raised some important questions.
[00:04:04] Why did it take a YouTuber to solve this problem?
[00:04:08] Why does a man who made his name giving away Lamborghinis and filming last-man-standing challenges now find himself doing something that you might think governments, NGOs, or international institutions should have done a long time ago?
[00:04:26] And, as we’ll come to discuss later on, is he actually solving anything at all?
[00:04:33] So, to the first set of questions, why did it take a celebrity YouTuber to solve this problem and why did these villages not have pumps like this many years ago?
[00:04:46] We’re not talking about high-speed internet or access to university education or cutting-edge cancer treatments.
[00:04:54] We’re talking about water, the most basic of basic needs, something that no human being can live more than a few days without.
[00:05:03] And what’s more, something that covers most of the Earth’s surface, literally falls from the sky, and when it doesn’t come from the sky, can be just a few metres below ground.
[00:05:15] After all, the wells MrBeast built weren’t high-tech. They don’t involve AI, space rockets or sophisticated computing.
[00:05:25] They’re just… wells.
[00:05:27] They tap into groundwater — the water stored beneath the earth’s surface — and bring it up to the surface where it can be used for drinking, washing, farming, and whatever else it might be needed for.
[00:05:42] Groundwater already existed in most of the places he visited, and it isn’t particularly complicated or expensive to bring it up to the surface.
[00:05:54] What was missing wasn’t the water; it was the infrastructure, the funding, and the political will to access it.
[00:06:03] This video, and the entire well-digging project, highlighted just a few examples of what some journalists and NGOs call the “global water crisis”, the reality that today an estimated two billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water.
[00:06:26] Of course, there are many reasons for this, and the water crisis looks different depending on where you are.
[00:06:34] But most of the problems can be grouped into four very broad buckets: geography, money, mismanagement, and neglect.
[00:06:47] Again, this is a simplification, and there isn’t always a neat and tidy division between these buckets, but it’s a useful way of thinking about the problem.
[00:06:58] So, first, geography.
[00:07:01] In some parts of the world, clearly, water is naturally scarce: for every person looking out of their kitchen window in northern Scotland wishing it would stop raining, there is another somewhere else in the world who would be over the moon to look out of their window and see the same thing.
[00:07:20] The oft-used example is Yemen, which gets an average of 17 cm of rain a year: about what some parts of the UK might get in a single month.
[00:07:32] But unlike the UK, Yemen doesn’t have the infrastructure to store and distribute water effectively.
[00:07:40] Its capital, Sana’a, is running out of water entirely, and some wells are now over a kilometre deep.
[00:07:48] There’s also another problem with water in Yemen, which has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with mismanagement, but we’ll come to that in a minute.
[00:07:59] In other places, water might exist, either underground or in seasonal rivers, but not in the right place at the right time, and without the proper facilities to store it, it simply gets washed away.
[00:08:15] The second bucket is money – having the funds to pay for the infrastructure required, whether that’s basic wells, water storage facilities, or more technologically advanced equipment like desalination facilities, where seawater is processed and turned into clean, drinkable water.
[00:08:36] The irony is that often the cost to access clean water is very low.
[00:08:43] In places where there is plentiful groundwater–like in the areas in MrBeast’s video–the water is often just a few dozen metres below the surface.
[00:08:54] It’s there, and all you need is to drill down and get it.
[00:08:59] But drilling costs money. Equipment costs money. Pipes, pumps, filters; all of this requires investment.
[00:09:08] Not a huge amount of money, but governments in many low-income countries either don’t have the funds or don’t prioritise water projects, especially in remote areas.
[00:09:21] And while international aid does help, it often comes with bureaucracy, short-term timelines, or political strings attached.
[00:09:31] So the result is this: water exists, but it remains trapped under ground, tantalisingly close, but utterly out of reach.
[00:09:43] The third bucket we can call mismanagement.
[00:09:47] Even in places where water is available, in the form of plentiful rivers or lakes, it often becomes polluted and therefore unsafe: the Ganges being a classic example.
[00:10:01] And if it isn’t polluted, it’s often used inefficiently, for things that simply aren’t a good use of limited water.
[00:10:11] Globally, around 70% of all freshwater is used for agriculture.
[00:10:18] Sure, agriculture is a perfectly good use of water in some cases, but in many countries with limited water resources, that water is diverted to grow cash crops like cotton, sugar, or avocados — crops that are water-intensive and destined for export.
[00:10:40] I told you we’d return to the other reason that there’s a water crisis in Yemen, and that’s because it is especially guilty of mismanaging its already limited groundwater.
[00:10:52] Around 40% of the country’s water supply goes to growing something called qat, which is a narcotic plant that gives you a buzz when you chew it.
[00:11:04] It has zero nutritional value, and if production were banned, or if someone waved a magic wand and all qat production stopped, Yemen’s water crisis might not quite disappear, but some serious pressure would be relieved.
[00:11:22] Now, this is an extreme example of a very poor country that has been in a state of violent civil war for over 10 years, so it would be completely unreasonable to imagine a Yemeni qat farmer should spend any time thinking about the impact his crop has on the water level, when all he is trying to do is survive.
[00:11:44] But still, qat is a major contributor to Yemen’s water supply issues.
[00:11:50] And there are plenty of other examples of countries where water is diverted towards cash crops for export rather than domestic consumption.
[00:12:01] The central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is landlocked and has limited water resources, yet it is one of the world’s largest producers of cotton, which is a particularly water-intensive crop.
[00:12:17] If you are a long time listener to this show, you might remember the role of cotton farming in the disappearance of the Aral Sea, from episode number 12. Uzbekistan diverted so much water to this thirsty crop that a large sea simply dried up and disappeared.
[00:12:37] So that’s mismanagement.
[00:12:40] The fourth and final bucket is perhaps the most frustrating of all: neglect.
[00:12:47] Because sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of water, or a lack of funds, or even active mismanagement.
[00:12:54] It’s just that nobody bothers to fix it.
[00:12:58] Water doesn’t win elections.
[00:13:00] It doesn’t attract headlines.
[00:13:02] And unlike a new road, a shiny stadium, or a government building with someone’s name on the side, it doesn’t make for good photo opportunities.
[00:13:12] So politicians and planners focus their attention elsewhere.
[00:13:18] There are also cases where water infrastructure was built — perhaps by a foreign NGO or as part of an aid project — but was then left to fall into disrepair.
[00:13:32] Pumps break. Filters clog. Pipes corrode.
[00:13:36] And because there’s no system in place to maintain them, no local expertise or cost-efficient way of replacing broken parts, the community is left with nothing.
[00:13:49] According to some estimates, between 25 and 40% of water points in sub-Saharan Africa are no longer functioning, often just a few years after installation.
[00:14:04] This is the quiet tragedy of the water crisis: it’s not always about what’s missing, it’s about what’s been forgotten.
[00:14:14] So, to recap, we have:
[00:14:16] Water that exists, but is in the wrong place.
[00:14:19] Communities that need it, but can’t afford to access it.
[00:14:23] Governments that are unable — or unwilling — to prioritise it.
[00:14:28] And domestic and international systems that are, at best, patchy and short-term in their efforts.
[00:14:37] Into this mix steps a man with a camera, a team of editors, and a couple of hundred million YouTube subscribers.
[00:14:46] He builds 100 wells, attracts heaps of praise and goodwill, and no doubt adds a few million people to his YouTube channel.
[00:14:55] Not so bad for a day’s work.
[00:14:58] Now, while the video received hundreds of thousands of positive comments, and millions more likes and shares, it also attracted a bunch of criticism.
[00:15:09] Some of it was predictable internet noise: he’s only doing it for the views, or why did he build 100 and not 1,000, or he should have built hospitals rather than wells.
[00:15:23] But some raised important ethical questions.
[00:15:28] The first line of criticism was about performative charity, the idea that MrBeast was only helping these communities on camera, for content, and ultimately for profit.
[00:15:42] After all, his YouTube videos make money.
[00:15:45] A lot of money, and even if he specified that he was giving all of the advertising revenue away to the project, and he was raising money for his water-based charity, he would still benefit indirectly from it.
[00:16:00] So, the question becomes: is this charity, or is it a business model disguised as generosity?
[00:16:08] Would these wells have been built if there were no cameras, no thumbnails, no ad revenue, no brand sponsors?
[00:16:17] A second criticism was about power and agency.
[00:16:22] Why is it that the world’s richest countries, multinational development agencies, and national governments failed to act, and a private individual, with no public accountability, stepped in instead?
[00:16:37] Is this a celebration of generosity?
[00:16:40] Or a symptom of a system that has outsourced basic public services to influencers?
[00:16:48] And there was another layer of discomfort — one that’s harder to pin down, but no less real.
[00:16:56] Some commentators felt that the video, while well-intentioned, fell into a familiar pattern:
[00:17:03] The white saviour narrative.
[00:17:06] A wealthy American flies into African villages and solves their problem with the wave of a wand, or in this case, the twist of a valve.
[00:17:17] Of course, MrBeast didn’t invent that narrative.
[00:17:21] And much to his credit, he didn’t centre himself in the video as much as someone else might have done.
[00:17:28] But for many, the format still felt uncomfortably close to a feel-good Western intervention story, where local people are recipients of generosity rather than participants in the solutions.
[00:17:44] Another common criticism, one often heard in discussions about international aid more broadly, is that giving handouts discourages self-sufficiency.
[00:17:56] That it risks creating dependency.
[00:17:59] That if people grow used to others arriving and “solving problems” for them, they may lose the incentive — or the confidence — to build these solutions themselves.
[00:18:12] How could a local well-installation company ever compete on price with “free”?
[00:18:18] And what incentive is there to solve these problems if you know that there will be handouts at some stage, even if you might need to wait a while for them.
[00:18:28] This argument is especially common among critics of foreign aid: the idea that decades of charity have created a kind of learned helplessness, where African governments and communities wait for help rather than take action.
[00:18:45] Now, although there might be some truth here, there is also a danger of oversimplification.
[00:18:52] Building infrastructure like wells does require local expertise, materials, and maintenance.
[00:18:58] And many communities do already try to build and repair water systems, with or without help. Often, they’re just missing the capital or political support to do so effectively.
[00:19:13] In MrBeast’s case, it’s worth noting that the wells were reportedly built in partnership with local contractors and NGOs, not just dropped in from above, and the ongoing maintenance and repair work of the wells will require local expertise and labour.
[00:19:31] Of course, the video doesn’t dwell on that side of things; it’s a 10-minute video intended to entertain and make you feel good, it was never going to go into the specifics of how everything was delivered and will be maintained.
[00:19:47] But this hasn’t stopped MrBeast’s critics from arguing that this video, and the entire project, creates an unbalanced picture: one where progress comes from outside, and where local people are passive recipients of foreign generosity.
[00:20:06] Now, to wrap things up, this is just one video, and these 100 wells are just a tiny step forward on the journey of securing clean, drinkable water for everyone who needs it.
[00:20:20] It did do a lot to raise awareness and money for global water projects, and showed people that getting clean water isn’t as complicated or expensive as they might have thought.
[00:20:33] According to one recent study, securing clean water for every person on the planet by 2030 could cost just 1% of global GDP - about 29 cents per person per day.
[00:20:50] It seems like a small price to pay, especially because the benefits greatly outweigh the cost, with this study suggesting that every dollar invested in water access and sanitation brings an average of $6.80 in return.
[00:21:09] If you ask me, it’s a good thing that someone with MrBeast’s reach is highlighting the problem of water access, but it certainly shouldn’t be theirs to fix, nor should they be criticised for “not doing enough”.
[00:21:23] Clearly, no single actor can solve the global water crisis alone.
[00:21:28] Governments carry the ultimate responsibility to provide safe water.
[00:21:34] NGOs and international organisations can supply resources and expertise.
[00:21:40] Local communities bring the knowledge and capacity to keep systems running.
[00:21:46] And yes, sometimes even YouTubers with vast audiences can play a part by raising awareness and mobilising funds.
[00:21:55] Charity is never a substitute for strong institutions, but when it works alongside them, it can accelerate progress.
[00:22:04] And at the end of the day, the real test isn’t whether 100 wells can be built for a YouTube video, it’s whether we can build a world where videos like this aren’t needed at all.
[00:22:19] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on MrBeast and the Global Water Crisis.
[00:22:24] If you’d like to watch the video of him digging the wells, just go to YouTube and search for “MrBeast wells” - he is the biggest YouTuber in the world and you will have no trouble finding it.
[00:22:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:39] Did you know about MrBeast before? What do you think of these kinds of massive YouTubers doing philanthropic work in their videos?
[00:22:47] Praiseworthy and good, deceptive and dangerous, or somewhere in between?
[00:22:52] you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about water.
[00:00:26] And more specifically, we’ll be talking about the most popular YouTuber in the world, MrBeast, and what has been called “the global water crisis”.
[00:00:37] It’s a story of celebrity, politics, geography, poverty, mismanagement, technology, and the liquid that every human needs to survive.
[00:00:49] OK then, let’s get right into it, and talk about MrBeast and the global water crisis.
[00:00:57] In November of 2023, the world’s most popular YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson, a man you are more likely to know by the name “MrBeast”, released a video titled “I Built 100 Wells in Africa.”
[00:01:15] It went instantly viral, and as of the time of recording, it has racked up over a quarter of a billion views.
[00:01:26] In the video, you see MrBeast and his team standing in villages across Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Cameroon, and Somalia, unveiling freshly built wells surrounded by cheering crowds.
[00:01:41] There are smiling children, colourful celebrations, and people clapping as clean water gushes out from a tap for the very first time.
[00:01:52] The tone of the video is upbeat and dramatic–this is a channel known for spectacle, after all–but the message is clear: access to water is life-changing, life-saving, even.
[00:02:08] Before, as you see in the video, these communities had to trudge for hours every day to get water, often across mountains, rivers, and dangerous terrain.
[00:02:20] And even after all this, it was often contaminated, dirty water that would make them sick, even kill them.
[00:02:30] Clearly, a pretty terrible situation, and a small insight into the reality of the estimated 1,000 children under the age of five who die every single day through diseases related to a lack of clean water.
[00:02:47] But after the arrival of this American YouTuber and his crew, beautiful fresh drinking water could be pumped from the ground, for free.
[00:02:59] MrBeast claimed that these wells would provide water for half a million people and, with the proper maintenance, could last for 30 years.
[00:03:11] The video was made in the classic MrBeast style: over-the-top animations, short and punchy.
[00:03:18] But it was one of his more serious subjects, and the comment section was flooded with people congratulating him, saying what a good thing he had done, and how this was a much more worthwhile use of his time than giving people money for staying in a circle or pressing buttons.
[00:03:38] After all, what happened was uplifting, inspiring, hopeful.
[00:03:44] And, if this meant that 500,000 people who previously didn’t have clean water now had it, surely this was a good thing?
[00:03:55] But, as you might imagine, it rubbed some people up the wrong way.
[00:04:00] And it raised some important questions.
[00:04:04] Why did it take a YouTuber to solve this problem?
[00:04:08] Why does a man who made his name giving away Lamborghinis and filming last-man-standing challenges now find himself doing something that you might think governments, NGOs, or international institutions should have done a long time ago?
[00:04:26] And, as we’ll come to discuss later on, is he actually solving anything at all?
[00:04:33] So, to the first set of questions, why did it take a celebrity YouTuber to solve this problem and why did these villages not have pumps like this many years ago?
[00:04:46] We’re not talking about high-speed internet or access to university education or cutting-edge cancer treatments.
[00:04:54] We’re talking about water, the most basic of basic needs, something that no human being can live more than a few days without.
[00:05:03] And what’s more, something that covers most of the Earth’s surface, literally falls from the sky, and when it doesn’t come from the sky, can be just a few metres below ground.
[00:05:15] After all, the wells MrBeast built weren’t high-tech. They don’t involve AI, space rockets or sophisticated computing.
[00:05:25] They’re just… wells.
[00:05:27] They tap into groundwater — the water stored beneath the earth’s surface — and bring it up to the surface where it can be used for drinking, washing, farming, and whatever else it might be needed for.
[00:05:42] Groundwater already existed in most of the places he visited, and it isn’t particularly complicated or expensive to bring it up to the surface.
[00:05:54] What was missing wasn’t the water; it was the infrastructure, the funding, and the political will to access it.
[00:06:03] This video, and the entire well-digging project, highlighted just a few examples of what some journalists and NGOs call the “global water crisis”, the reality that today an estimated two billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water.
[00:06:26] Of course, there are many reasons for this, and the water crisis looks different depending on where you are.
[00:06:34] But most of the problems can be grouped into four very broad buckets: geography, money, mismanagement, and neglect.
[00:06:47] Again, this is a simplification, and there isn’t always a neat and tidy division between these buckets, but it’s a useful way of thinking about the problem.
[00:06:58] So, first, geography.
[00:07:01] In some parts of the world, clearly, water is naturally scarce: for every person looking out of their kitchen window in northern Scotland wishing it would stop raining, there is another somewhere else in the world who would be over the moon to look out of their window and see the same thing.
[00:07:20] The oft-used example is Yemen, which gets an average of 17 cm of rain a year: about what some parts of the UK might get in a single month.
[00:07:32] But unlike the UK, Yemen doesn’t have the infrastructure to store and distribute water effectively.
[00:07:40] Its capital, Sana’a, is running out of water entirely, and some wells are now over a kilometre deep.
[00:07:48] There’s also another problem with water in Yemen, which has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with mismanagement, but we’ll come to that in a minute.
[00:07:59] In other places, water might exist, either underground or in seasonal rivers, but not in the right place at the right time, and without the proper facilities to store it, it simply gets washed away.
[00:08:15] The second bucket is money – having the funds to pay for the infrastructure required, whether that’s basic wells, water storage facilities, or more technologically advanced equipment like desalination facilities, where seawater is processed and turned into clean, drinkable water.
[00:08:36] The irony is that often the cost to access clean water is very low.
[00:08:43] In places where there is plentiful groundwater–like in the areas in MrBeast’s video–the water is often just a few dozen metres below the surface.
[00:08:54] It’s there, and all you need is to drill down and get it.
[00:08:59] But drilling costs money. Equipment costs money. Pipes, pumps, filters; all of this requires investment.
[00:09:08] Not a huge amount of money, but governments in many low-income countries either don’t have the funds or don’t prioritise water projects, especially in remote areas.
[00:09:21] And while international aid does help, it often comes with bureaucracy, short-term timelines, or political strings attached.
[00:09:31] So the result is this: water exists, but it remains trapped under ground, tantalisingly close, but utterly out of reach.
[00:09:43] The third bucket we can call mismanagement.
[00:09:47] Even in places where water is available, in the form of plentiful rivers or lakes, it often becomes polluted and therefore unsafe: the Ganges being a classic example.
[00:10:01] And if it isn’t polluted, it’s often used inefficiently, for things that simply aren’t a good use of limited water.
[00:10:11] Globally, around 70% of all freshwater is used for agriculture.
[00:10:18] Sure, agriculture is a perfectly good use of water in some cases, but in many countries with limited water resources, that water is diverted to grow cash crops like cotton, sugar, or avocados — crops that are water-intensive and destined for export.
[00:10:40] I told you we’d return to the other reason that there’s a water crisis in Yemen, and that’s because it is especially guilty of mismanaging its already limited groundwater.
[00:10:52] Around 40% of the country’s water supply goes to growing something called qat, which is a narcotic plant that gives you a buzz when you chew it.
[00:11:04] It has zero nutritional value, and if production were banned, or if someone waved a magic wand and all qat production stopped, Yemen’s water crisis might not quite disappear, but some serious pressure would be relieved.
[00:11:22] Now, this is an extreme example of a very poor country that has been in a state of violent civil war for over 10 years, so it would be completely unreasonable to imagine a Yemeni qat farmer should spend any time thinking about the impact his crop has on the water level, when all he is trying to do is survive.
[00:11:44] But still, qat is a major contributor to Yemen’s water supply issues.
[00:11:50] And there are plenty of other examples of countries where water is diverted towards cash crops for export rather than domestic consumption.
[00:12:01] The central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is landlocked and has limited water resources, yet it is one of the world’s largest producers of cotton, which is a particularly water-intensive crop.
[00:12:17] If you are a long time listener to this show, you might remember the role of cotton farming in the disappearance of the Aral Sea, from episode number 12. Uzbekistan diverted so much water to this thirsty crop that a large sea simply dried up and disappeared.
[00:12:37] So that’s mismanagement.
[00:12:40] The fourth and final bucket is perhaps the most frustrating of all: neglect.
[00:12:47] Because sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of water, or a lack of funds, or even active mismanagement.
[00:12:54] It’s just that nobody bothers to fix it.
[00:12:58] Water doesn’t win elections.
[00:13:00] It doesn’t attract headlines.
[00:13:02] And unlike a new road, a shiny stadium, or a government building with someone’s name on the side, it doesn’t make for good photo opportunities.
[00:13:12] So politicians and planners focus their attention elsewhere.
[00:13:18] There are also cases where water infrastructure was built — perhaps by a foreign NGO or as part of an aid project — but was then left to fall into disrepair.
[00:13:32] Pumps break. Filters clog. Pipes corrode.
[00:13:36] And because there’s no system in place to maintain them, no local expertise or cost-efficient way of replacing broken parts, the community is left with nothing.
[00:13:49] According to some estimates, between 25 and 40% of water points in sub-Saharan Africa are no longer functioning, often just a few years after installation.
[00:14:04] This is the quiet tragedy of the water crisis: it’s not always about what’s missing, it’s about what’s been forgotten.
[00:14:14] So, to recap, we have:
[00:14:16] Water that exists, but is in the wrong place.
[00:14:19] Communities that need it, but can’t afford to access it.
[00:14:23] Governments that are unable — or unwilling — to prioritise it.
[00:14:28] And domestic and international systems that are, at best, patchy and short-term in their efforts.
[00:14:37] Into this mix steps a man with a camera, a team of editors, and a couple of hundred million YouTube subscribers.
[00:14:46] He builds 100 wells, attracts heaps of praise and goodwill, and no doubt adds a few million people to his YouTube channel.
[00:14:55] Not so bad for a day’s work.
[00:14:58] Now, while the video received hundreds of thousands of positive comments, and millions more likes and shares, it also attracted a bunch of criticism.
[00:15:09] Some of it was predictable internet noise: he’s only doing it for the views, or why did he build 100 and not 1,000, or he should have built hospitals rather than wells.
[00:15:23] But some raised important ethical questions.
[00:15:28] The first line of criticism was about performative charity, the idea that MrBeast was only helping these communities on camera, for content, and ultimately for profit.
[00:15:42] After all, his YouTube videos make money.
[00:15:45] A lot of money, and even if he specified that he was giving all of the advertising revenue away to the project, and he was raising money for his water-based charity, he would still benefit indirectly from it.
[00:16:00] So, the question becomes: is this charity, or is it a business model disguised as generosity?
[00:16:08] Would these wells have been built if there were no cameras, no thumbnails, no ad revenue, no brand sponsors?
[00:16:17] A second criticism was about power and agency.
[00:16:22] Why is it that the world’s richest countries, multinational development agencies, and national governments failed to act, and a private individual, with no public accountability, stepped in instead?
[00:16:37] Is this a celebration of generosity?
[00:16:40] Or a symptom of a system that has outsourced basic public services to influencers?
[00:16:48] And there was another layer of discomfort — one that’s harder to pin down, but no less real.
[00:16:56] Some commentators felt that the video, while well-intentioned, fell into a familiar pattern:
[00:17:03] The white saviour narrative.
[00:17:06] A wealthy American flies into African villages and solves their problem with the wave of a wand, or in this case, the twist of a valve.
[00:17:17] Of course, MrBeast didn’t invent that narrative.
[00:17:21] And much to his credit, he didn’t centre himself in the video as much as someone else might have done.
[00:17:28] But for many, the format still felt uncomfortably close to a feel-good Western intervention story, where local people are recipients of generosity rather than participants in the solutions.
[00:17:44] Another common criticism, one often heard in discussions about international aid more broadly, is that giving handouts discourages self-sufficiency.
[00:17:56] That it risks creating dependency.
[00:17:59] That if people grow used to others arriving and “solving problems” for them, they may lose the incentive — or the confidence — to build these solutions themselves.
[00:18:12] How could a local well-installation company ever compete on price with “free”?
[00:18:18] And what incentive is there to solve these problems if you know that there will be handouts at some stage, even if you might need to wait a while for them.
[00:18:28] This argument is especially common among critics of foreign aid: the idea that decades of charity have created a kind of learned helplessness, where African governments and communities wait for help rather than take action.
[00:18:45] Now, although there might be some truth here, there is also a danger of oversimplification.
[00:18:52] Building infrastructure like wells does require local expertise, materials, and maintenance.
[00:18:58] And many communities do already try to build and repair water systems, with or without help. Often, they’re just missing the capital or political support to do so effectively.
[00:19:13] In MrBeast’s case, it’s worth noting that the wells were reportedly built in partnership with local contractors and NGOs, not just dropped in from above, and the ongoing maintenance and repair work of the wells will require local expertise and labour.
[00:19:31] Of course, the video doesn’t dwell on that side of things; it’s a 10-minute video intended to entertain and make you feel good, it was never going to go into the specifics of how everything was delivered and will be maintained.
[00:19:47] But this hasn’t stopped MrBeast’s critics from arguing that this video, and the entire project, creates an unbalanced picture: one where progress comes from outside, and where local people are passive recipients of foreign generosity.
[00:20:06] Now, to wrap things up, this is just one video, and these 100 wells are just a tiny step forward on the journey of securing clean, drinkable water for everyone who needs it.
[00:20:20] It did do a lot to raise awareness and money for global water projects, and showed people that getting clean water isn’t as complicated or expensive as they might have thought.
[00:20:33] According to one recent study, securing clean water for every person on the planet by 2030 could cost just 1% of global GDP - about 29 cents per person per day.
[00:20:50] It seems like a small price to pay, especially because the benefits greatly outweigh the cost, with this study suggesting that every dollar invested in water access and sanitation brings an average of $6.80 in return.
[00:21:09] If you ask me, it’s a good thing that someone with MrBeast’s reach is highlighting the problem of water access, but it certainly shouldn’t be theirs to fix, nor should they be criticised for “not doing enough”.
[00:21:23] Clearly, no single actor can solve the global water crisis alone.
[00:21:28] Governments carry the ultimate responsibility to provide safe water.
[00:21:34] NGOs and international organisations can supply resources and expertise.
[00:21:40] Local communities bring the knowledge and capacity to keep systems running.
[00:21:46] And yes, sometimes even YouTubers with vast audiences can play a part by raising awareness and mobilising funds.
[00:21:55] Charity is never a substitute for strong institutions, but when it works alongside them, it can accelerate progress.
[00:22:04] And at the end of the day, the real test isn’t whether 100 wells can be built for a YouTube video, it’s whether we can build a world where videos like this aren’t needed at all.
[00:22:19] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on MrBeast and the Global Water Crisis.
[00:22:24] If you’d like to watch the video of him digging the wells, just go to YouTube and search for “MrBeast wells” - he is the biggest YouTuber in the world and you will have no trouble finding it.
[00:22:35] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:22:39] Did you know about MrBeast before? What do you think of these kinds of massive YouTubers doing philanthropic work in their videos?
[00:22:47] Praiseworthy and good, deceptive and dangerous, or somewhere in between?
[00:22:52] you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:23:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
