I think it takes more than just money to setup the towers. The article mentions maintenance is a big problem for imported solutions, so they'll need to teach locals on how to maintain/build the tower. There aren't too many people who knows enough to build such a tower, so they cannot simply spend $500 * 1000 to get towers for 100 villages, since they need to first teach people to build it and second teach people in each village to maintain it. Perhaps, the first year the target is more than just 2 towers, but learning how to make the tower easier to maintain as well as learning how best to 'sell' the tower to locals.
Everything in the article suggests that this is something that can be done locally:
"If the many failed development projects of the past 60 years have taught us anything,...it's that complicated, imported solutions do not work."
"inexpensive, easily-assembled structure that extracts gallons of fresh water from the air.
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"The structures, made from biodegradable materials, are easy to clean and can be erected without mechanical tools in less than a week.
And 1,000 towers would be on the scale of "learning how to make the tower easier to maintain as well as learning how best to 'sell' the tower to locals."
If this device was capable of pulling in more than 10/gallons of water a day for $500 capex (and cheaper at volume), I would expect to see millions of them installed across the african continent in just a few years.
Heck - I'd expect to see them installed across the North American continent as well. Some of the crazy stuff we used to do to try and get 5 gallons/water a day when I was growing up - I spent two solid months hand digging a well that barely managed to deliver that much water a day. A $500 "Water Tower" would have been awesome.
Add in the insight that the project was launched in 2012, and the erection itself apparently takes four people a week[1] and you have to wonder why they're so unambitious. I'd speculate that might be down to it requiring very specific local condensation conditions to function with the claimed efficiency, but there's a long and mostly disappointing history of trying to create drinking water from air[2]
