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Looking at the book Environmental Health Engineering in The Tropics: An Introductory Text by Sany Cairncross and Richard Feachem, published by Wiley it states that hand dug wells are the most common method of extracting water from the ground.

The wells can be constructed cheaply with local equipment and materials and water can be drawn using a bucket and rope which is initially cheaper than a pump and will be easier to fix or adapt when items fail.

Practical Action has used well with buckets in the more remote parts of Turkana, Kenya where there were problems with handpumps breaking and due to the remoteness of the location the handpumps could not be mended by people who would have used the water source. Some of the handpumps had fallen into disrepair and people then had to search for alternative sources of water which were not clean or reliable.

However, there are some obvious disadvantages with the increased potential for contamination and the difficulty in using a rope and bucket.