The Hippo Roller was first designed in South Africa and sparked international interests. It caught the attention of one person in particular, Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H. Project H aims to design WITH instead of FOR people. They mainly focus on design cases for the developing worlds. Emily PIlloton offered her company’s design skills free of charge in optimizing the Hippo Roller. There were a lot of tradeoffs in creating a newer and better version of the past Hippo Roller. Together, they managed to get a high yield from the molding process by modifying the roller. They also wanted to optimize its sustainability but by using recycled plastic, it damaged the structural integrity of the Hippo Roller so they had to sacrifice using a recycled material for a UV coated plastic which can withstand the repeated abuse and demanding environment. It has been a long road to bring the Hippo Roller to where it is today and it continues to be critically reviewed for improvements. 

The one drawback of the Hippo Roller is that is has been said to be too expensive as explained here. There are still many challenges the Hippo Roller faces before it can be truly accessible to all those in need in developing countries.