When I saw the title I was almost expecting them to literally use an elephant to suck up the water and blow it out of their trunk.

#1 I was thinking more along the lines of getting an elephant to do the job of what this guy is doing here 0:33 . May be make it run a mile or something or in circles!!.
Silly Me!

So where does the clean water come from? Do they put clean water in there or do they collect rain?

#3 Nope it's a well that connects the ground to a layer of fresh, clean water.

The reason this project is important is because previous devices that were used to extract water in various places across Africa miserably failed because they couldn't be repaired locally due to their design.

The reason this solution is great is because (as the narrator mentioned in the beginning of the video) it can be constructed in a short time using local materials and services and thus can be repaired locally and quickly too. Plus it's super efficient.

Wow amazing , If you look at the size of the washers that bring the water up they look tiny and I thought its only going to trickle out. Only to see it a few seconds later churning it out in bucket loads what a simple and amazing pump. And I bet unlike the water I get out of the tap here in ireland, I bet it does not taste and smell like bloody chlorine you cant beat fresh well water for taste i'd go so far to call them lucky basterds even

wtf if everything is build locally and all the ppl working on it are locals then why the Hell aren't they building it themselves???
but no they have to wait for some stupid Europeans to help them...
rly no water = build a bloody well! can't find water = move somewhere else!
but African ppl can't seem to understand that

#3 WTF, don't you know how a well works???

Why they don't use hand pump. It's much simpler.

#10 Great question but the answer is in my comment in #4. Many used hand pumps, but the material used for it (mainly PVC) could not be fixed in a local workshop and often broke. This was the better overall choice.

The main objective in designing the elephant pump was to make sure that nearby services could repair them if needed.

I didn't pay much attention to the video but its caption is rather misleading - there was no elephant pumping water with this thing...

this is the way to go, easy to build cheap to purchase and effictive !!