By Kathleen Shears, MS
First published November 27, 2024 by GlobalWaters.org

In rural Kenya, where only 35 percent of households have access to safe drinking water, Margaret worried about the quality of the water she carried home each day from a borehole near the village of Lumino. “We used to face a lot of challenges accessing untreated water,” she says. 

The daily trek to fetch water means women and girls like Margaret have less time to perform household chores, generate income, or do schoolwork. Long journeys to obtain water may expose them to physical and sexual violence, and the unprotected water sources available to them are rarely safe for consumption.

Margaret and her neighbors’ lives changed when a water project, co-funded by Kakamega County and USAID, began piping safe drinking water to their homes at an affordable subsidized rate. “Paying a small fee to access safe water is better than treating waterborne diseases,” she says.

The arrival of piped water at rural households in Kenya is the culmination of more than a decade of sustained support and partnership between USAID and the Government of Kenya. This initiative is just one example of how USAID’s long-term commitment to improving water and sanitation access in Kenya has spurred a transformation in services across the country. 

The Journey of Professionalizing Rural Water Service

Two years after the U.S. Water for the World Act passed in 2014, Kenya’s own landmark water legislation was signed into law. The Kenya Water Act of 2016 required county governments to provide safe drinking water to rural areas, where water services were not considered commercially viable. 

In response to this mandate, USAID partnered with local governments in eight counties to help establish new water service providers (WSPs) and facilitate the transition from community-based to professional management. In practice, the county governments developed the laws, policies, and regulations required to operate a water service and register the new WSPs, with technical assistance from USAID. With those legal frameworks in place, the counties tackled the challenge of operationalizing the WSPs in partnership with USAID, establishing management boards, recruiting staff, securing licenses, and adopting and implementing appropriate service delivery models in accordance with Water Services Regulatory Board guidelines for the provision of water services in rural and underserved areas.

These new WSPs often faced significant obstacles. For example, in rural Kakamega, limited and deteriorating water facilities could not meet the growing population’s increasing demand for water, and the fledgling WSP lacked the institutional capacity to manage those facilities.

USAID advised the newly formed Kakamega County Rural Water and Sanitation Company (KACRUWASCO) on restructuring the utility and building the capacity of staff and leadership. Members of the Board of Management received instruction and mentorship in corporate governance, while staff training covered operations and maintenance, financial management, customer care, and compliance. 

USAID’s focus on supporting water utility staff continues today. “Staff are embedded directly within the Department of Water,” says Japheth Mbuvi, who has led the Agency’s WASH efforts in western Kenya over the past decade. “That ensures we are able to work together on a day-to-day basis.”

At the county level, USAID and water department staff co-create work plans, while the county government is responsible for the final product. “This allows us to ensure that the government still remains in the driver’s seat and we are supporting government-led initiatives,” Mbuvi says. 

The local government’s commitment to providing safe drinking water to its population, with sustained support from USAID, has started to yield tangible results. In Kakamega County, improved performance—including timely responses to customer complaints—and the adoption of an automated billing and collection system increased the utility’s monthly revenue from KES 250,000 ($1,756) in February 2023 to KES 2.192 million ($17,074) in June 2023, enabling KACRUWASCO to expand service from 3,273 to 4,700 connections between June 2023 and September 2024. 

Scaling Access to Water Service Across Kenya

Kakamega County’s success is not a one-off. In Kenya’s third largest city, Kisumu, a long-running partnership between the county government and USAID has yielded similar results.

Since Thomas Odongo joined KIWASCO (Kisumu’s WSP) as Managing Director in 2014, the business has grown threefold, from KES 35 million ($272,620) to KES 93 million ($724,392). Currently, 92 percent of Kisumu residents have access to safe drinking water through KIWASCO. The utility has had the highest customer satisfaction rating of any Kenyan WSP for the past two years. 

As in Kakamega County, USAID used co-creation to support KIWASCO in developing a strategic plan, and followed up with capacity building to help staff implement the plan, leading to increased efficiency and customer satisfaction.

KIWASCO increased access to water in underserved areas of Kisumu through contracts with local nongovernmental organizations. Under this delegated management model, a master operator manages construction of “last-mile” connectivity to the utility’s distribution lines, maintenance, and billing in a community of 300 to 600 households.

Odongo says the master operators have gained acceptance because they are part of the community. As a result of these efforts, 90 percent of residents of Kisumu’s low-income areas now have access to safe drinking water, primarily through household water connections.

Another priority has been reducing “non-revenue water,” which includes water lost through leakages, problems with meter accuracy and data handling, and theft. KIWASCO adopted a system that uses mobile phones to read water meters, minimizing human error and sensitizing staff on the need to reduce non-revenue water.

The utility also conducted a “district meter area” case study, which involves isolating part of a water network, measuring the water supplied to it and consumed, and identifying the main sources of water loss. The lessons from this exercise have helped reduce non-revenue water loss from 47 to 33 percent as of October 2024.

Expanding to Meet Urban Sanitation Needs

In 2018, KIWASCO took on the daunting challenge of expanding access to sanitation.

County public health officials were initially skeptical that the WSP had a role to play in sanitation. Odongo remembers that persuading the utility’s board of the need to expand into sanitation was also a challenge. However, the county and USAID had a compelling case: “Improved sanitation in low-income areas will reduce pollution and improve water quality as we work toward mitigating the effects of climate change,” he explains.

KIWASCO’s sanitation strategy includes strategic partnerships with the private sector. For example, the utility allows private operators to dump waste they collect at KIWASCO’s treatment plant for proper disposal free of charge. KIWASCO even purchased two vacuum trucks to transport fecal sludge to its treatment facilities on behalf of private operators that may not have the capacity to transport it themselves. These strategies help incentivize private operators to empty and treat waste properly, while promoting productive engagement between the utility and the private sector. 

Today, USAID is helping introduce market-based sanitation solutions by training local business owners and masons to sell and build the necessary infrastructure for more durable toilets and other innovative sanitation products. Support for the growth of locally owned, led, and sustained sanitation solutions—a priority under the U.S. Global Water Strategy—is expanding the reach of sanitation services across the region. Notably, in Kisumu, household access to sanitation services rose from 33 to 59 percent after the WSP added sanitation to its portfolio. USAID is also fostering the development of a financially sustainable and locally owned sanitation and menstrual hygiene management marketplace in eight counties. Under this strategy, the Agency pairs utilities with institutions like the Water Sector Trust Fund, where the utilities may explore favorable financing terms for expanding sanitation services.

Rising to the Challenge: How Utilities Are Addressing Climate Change, Coordination Issues, and Financing Gaps

Although county governments and utilities in Kenya face persistent challenges to ensure access to water and sanitation services, USAID’s foundational work over the past decade has strengthened governance. This means that county governments are now better equipped to address these challenges in comprehensive ways.

Water scarcity in Kenya—where 85 percent of the land is dry or semi-arid—is exacerbated by climate change. Ten years ago, Kisumu’s main water source was a permanent river. Now the WSP must ration water during more frequent droughts, when the River Kibos runs dry. USAID works with counties to develop and implement climate-resilient water safety plans and facilitates inter-county meetings to support collaborative management of shared water resources.

The devolution of water and sanitation services to county-owned utilities has created both challenges and opportunities. With so many stakeholders involved—including multiple national and county government agencies—questions about control of resources and the division of responsibilities inevitably arise. To navigate and resolve these issues through dialogue and action planning, USAID leveraged its strength as a convening power to establish an intergovernmental coordination framework that brings representatives of the agencies together.

Another pressing challenge is water and sanitation financing. In 2018, the funding available to the sector represented only about 40 percent of what would be needed to achieve the goal of universal coverage. Mbuvi explained that the solution lies in a blend of commercial financing and more efficient use of public sector funding. Traditionally, banks have been reluctant to invest in water services, but efforts to educate them about the most valuable assets of a water utility—its revenues rather than its physical capital—have begun to yield results. USAID is collaborating with its partners and the private sector to develop and implement innovative financing mechanisms and instruments that address this gap.  

Looking Ahead

USAID’s High-Priority Country Plan sets ambitious goals for supporting Kenya, aiming to increase access to basic or improved water services for 1.6 million people; provide basic or improved sanitation to 1 million people; and mobilize roughly $130 million for the sector. 

Realizing these goals “[will] have only been possible because of the very fundamental baseline work that has been done in terms of improving governance within the sector,” Mbuvi says. He notes that USAID’s long-term commitment to strengthening county-level and corporate governance of the WSPs “has been instrumental in ensuring that the investments that come into the sector are able then to translate into better access and better quality services for the people.” 

This approach is spurring a transformation in services and enabling the government to begin realizing its goal of Amasti Khumuliango, or “bring[ing] water to the doorstep” in Luhya, for underserved areas across the country.

Related Resources

• Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2014

About The Author

Kathleen Shears, MS, is a science writer and communications specialist who works with the Research Utilization team at FHI 360 to translate public health research findings into evidence-based policies and practices. Before joining FHI 360, Kathleen served as a communications manager for global projects advancing child survival and infectious disease prevention. She was also a congressional aide specializing in health and education issues and a newspaper reporter. Kathleen has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.