Kenya loses Sh7.8bn to non-revenue water annually, says official

Kenya loses Sh7.8 billion to non-revenue water annually, Water Services Providers Association CEO Antony Ambugo.

Statistics from the Water Services Regulatory Board has put the figure for NRW at 41 per cent.

NRW is water that has been produced and is lost before it reaches the customer. 

Ambugo on Tuesday said the 41 per cent water loss monetarily translates to Sh7.8 billion.

“This is equivalent to the amount of money used in the Northern Water Collector Tunnel, which will be a game changer in Nairobi,” he said.

Ambugo spoke during a four-day water loss conference held at Green Hills Hotel in Nyeri town for all water provision companies. The conference is themed Addressing Water Loss In The 21st Century Using Culture Change and Technology and runs from Tuesday to Friday this week.

He commended Nyeri Water and Sanitation Company (NYEWASCO) saying for the last 10 years, it has shown outstanding performance.

NYEWASCO’s non-revenue water is around 16 per cent, while internationally best practices should be below 20 per cent.

Ambugo placed water coverage in the country at 58 per cent, which is still low.

However, he said, as the losses are reduced, more water will be released, which will increase coverage.

To address the problem of water loss, the association is exposing water service providers to technology.

“So if you don’t know how much you produce, then you don’t know how much you are losing,” he said.

“And we acquired expensive ultrasonic flow meters that are able to calibrate the meters to know that if it is 20 litres, then it is exactly 20 litres.”

The CEO said by assisting the utilities in calibration, then they will be in a position to measure clearly what they are producing and what they are losing.

Ambugo said they also have pipe locators, adding that they are leasing the utilities at an affordable cost.

He said this is because many of the utilities are unable to invest in such expensive utilities.

Leasing them out will enable the utilities to understand how their losses are coming about and are also able to sample technologies from the market to improve or mitigate non-revenue water.

He also said water coverage has been greatly hampered by lack of adequate finances.

Water services'providers have had very little domain in terms of infrastructure expansion, with only those who are credit worthy being able to access finance, he said.

Ambugo said Kenya has already been earmarked as a country attaining middle income status and therefore not qualifying for grants support.

This, he said, means a company should be able to be bankable to attract commercial finance.

“And this is a challenge because most of the companies operating in peri-urban and rural areas are not able to do what is called full cost recoveries. They are on subsidies,” he said.

“So this is another area that we are focusing on because now we are talking about the Water Act 2016 which has added another function to the utilities that they can now develop and hold assets on behalf of the county.”

This, he said, will give utilities a very strong balance sheet which will enable them to attract financing from the financial market.

“We have been told that the gap we have in terms of financing water infrastructure in the country is around Sh 100 billion per year,  because whatever the government can mop up is around Sh50 billion,” he said.

This will still remain a mirage if utilities cannot be strengthened, he said.

He said this is the reason they are bringing the private, sector, county government and national government to mop-up their support in terms of financial governance because even non revenues has governance issues.

This will strengthen utilities to ensure they are the vehicles to deliver the dream of Vision 2030 and SDG number six, which alludes to safe water and sanitation, he added.