Capacity building in the Kenyan water sector

WSPs are regulated by a central regulatory board, but each province has their own WSP.

Pre-paid water dispenser in Korogocho

Automated customer billing support software is helping LOWASCO achieve accurate and timely billing.

Example of a partnership in which SWIFT Global Associate WSUP has taken part in.
(Korogocho informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.)

MD Gichunki receiving the Outstanding Contribution Award – Water for NCWSC’s work in informal settlements.

What is the issue?

Kenya is officially listed by the UN as a water-poor country. In 2015, this meant that more than 40% of the Kenyan population relied on unimproved (untreated) water. Since the creation of the Water Act in 2002, management of water sources has been decentralized to Water Service Providers (WSPs).

However, these WSPs often struggle to provide continuous water supplies. Simeon Ogamba, Oxfam WASH Advisor, explains: “Many of the WSPs have a high percentage of Non-Revenue Water (NRW): at times as much as 40% of water used does not generate revenue because of illegal connections or leakage. Given that most WSPs are not in a position to meet the ever growing water demand, there is a real need to reduce the NRW. Moreover, while many WSPs manage to just about cover their operational costs, they often do not generate enough revenue to cover the costs of servicing debts or to be reinvested in infrastructural improvements. This creates sustainability issues in the long run.”

Over the past decade, SWIFT partner Oxfam has increasingly shifted to working closely with water utilities to enhance their governance and performance. Simeon: “In Kenya, our work with WSPs is one of the main tenets to our strategy towards a sustainable WASH sub-sector. WSPs are vital partners because they have responsibility to manage these big systems, much in the same way as the water companies in other countries. We work with them to ensure resources are spent effectively and they respond to the needs of the customers. Another advantage of working with WSPs is that you can focus resources. WSPs understand their region’s water and sanitation issues and will be there after the programme ends.”

What are SWIFT partners doing?

SWIFT’s approach to the Kenyan water sector is a combination of strategic partnerships, operational support with implementation and technological innovations.

For example, in Nairobi’s Korogocho and Kahawa Soweto informal settlements, SWIFT partner Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) cooperated with the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) and three other partners to improve drinking water supplies. The initiative extended the existing network into the settlements, using high-quality polyethylene (PE) pipes. This allowed pre-paid water dispensers to be installed, which are now providing water for as little as one tenth of the price that consumers used to pay to water vendors. WSUP was responsible for implementation and project management.

To give another example, in Lodwar Oxfam has recently partnered with Turkana County government to support the local WSP, LOWASCO. Oxfam was able to facilitate an audit of LOWASCO’s billing system, provided a licensed billing software and trained staff in day-to-day usage, aiding management and record transparancy.

The consultant will provide ongoing backstopping support for any issues that may arise during migration to the new system in the coming months. Once the WBM software is fully operational and the billing team is confident in its usage, LOWASCO management could seek to upgrade to an e-billing (sms/email) system. This will increase transparency and good accounting which will in turn improve the service to the people of Lodwar.

What are the challenges?

There is a general problem of willingness to pay for water. In many areas there is an entrenched notion that water should be a free service, particularly if this has previously been provided as part of a humanitarian response or has been promised by politicians.

Moreover, there are a number of other challenges that affect the performance of WSPs in the Kenyan water sector. Irregular procurement processes, illegal connections, collusion of officials with informal water cartels, and falsification of invoices and accounts are all serious challenges that water sector organizations face.

A third challenge has to do with political uncertainty. Simeon: “The Kenyan Constitution prescribes that all regional governments manage their own water service providers. We are working with the national government to ensure that national policy does not contradict the regional ones, but given the upcoming elections we do not know how the policy will evolve over the coming year, especially at the county level.”

How will the challenges be met?

Another way to support change is through training with the staff of the utilities themselves. Earlier this year Oxfam has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with KEWASNET, the Kenya Water and Sanitation Civil Societies Network. Broadly, KEWASNET provides a linkage between water utilities and users by facilitating partnerships between policymakers and stakeholders. By working together, Oxfam and KEWASNET will be able to share knowledge and resources to increase capacity across the water sector: opportunities include improving the complaints mechanism and highlighting customers’ concerns or challenges.

On the issue of integrity in particular, Oxfam and KEWASNET recently facilitated a 2.5 day workshop together with experts from cewas Integrity Management. Simeon: “The purpose here is not only to inform the WSPs (as well as the County Governments) of the legal framework under which they are meant to operate, but also to give them an overview of the different management and business models that they can adopt to ensure service delivery, as well as priority issues or challenges that need to addressed.”

How do you ensure that these changes are sustainable?

Creating sustainable change goes far beyond several-day workshops, so it is important to think of the long term. During the workshop, three of the WSPs SWIFT works with went through the different steps to develop an integrity management (IM) roadmap. This included awareness raising, business model description, risk assessment and identification of IM tools. In the coming months, Oxfam staff will continue to support the WSPs to address issues that have been identified during the IM process. The WSPs have committed to implement or revise the IM roadmap as necessary. In the long run, this will become a resource WSP staff can continue to draw on.

In other cases, political advocacy can play a role. Joanna Trevor, Global Programme Manager for the SWIFT Consortium: “Local politicians and counsellors can be either blockers or enablers, so by proactively engaging them we can often pre-empt and avoid problems. Water is political. Some leaders may support Oxfam because association with the project makes them look good; more challenging are those who give contradictory messages, for example that if people voted for them water would be free.”

In the end, the increased capacity of Kenya’s WSPs is what will help entrench these changes. Although there is a long road ahead, there is some recognition that the strategy is bearing fruit. For example, at the 2017 Africa Utility Industry Awards held in May in Cape Town, South Africa, Managing Director Eng. Philip Gichuki was awarded “Outstanding Contribution Award- Water”.

The award is a recognition for the progress that they are making on serving informal settlements like Dandora, where WSUP has previously worked together with the NCWSC to upgrade the area’s water supply system and improve access for 52,000 low-income consumers.

Want to know more?

Have a look at WSUP’s blog to find out more about WSUP and NCWSC’s work in Dandora slum.

To read more about how the currently ongoing drought is affecting the North of Kenya, please see this article about SWIFT’s programme there.