Time to stop billions of shillings and water from going down the drain.
It is six o’clock on a chilly morning in a Kenyan town. A gushing pipe and loud murmurs wake up a mother before sunrise. She runs towards an old water kiosk, balancing several empty jerricans outside her gate, only to find hundreds of people queuing. She knows the taps may only run for an hour. A few streets away, beneath the tarmac, thousands of litres of treated water are silently escaping through ageing pipes. Nobody sees the leak. Nobody collects the revenue. Yet both the family and the water company pay the price. By the time the maintenance team locates the pipe burst several hours later, hundreds of thousands of litres of treated water have disappeared into the ground. The treatment chemicals have already been paid for. The electricity used to pump the water has already been consumed. Yet not a single shilling will be recovered from the water that never reached a customer.
This quiet loss is repeated every day in many Kenyan towns. It rarely makes headlines, yet it drains an estimated 13.7 billion annually through leakages, illegal connections, and other forms of waste, according to the Water Regulatory Board’s 18th impact report released a week ago. This invisible conundrum is known as Non-Revenue Water (NRW), and it may well be the single biggest obstacle to achieving universal access to safe and reliable water in Kenya. NRW is the gap between the water a utility produces and the water it bills. This water is usually lost in two ways: Physical losses (leaking pipes, ageing infrastructure, burst mains) and commercial losses (illegal connections, faulty meters, poor record-keeping). Either way, the water is lost through unaccountable means.
While releasing the latest IMPACT report, WASREB Chairman Job Chirchir identified NRW as the sector’s most persistent challenge. He stressed, is not merely technical but an economic and environmental imperative requiring collective commitment.
NRW isn’t just a technical problem; it’s the root of a frightening financial spiral. Widespread non-repayment by Water Service Providers has left Water Works Development Agencies unable to meet their own obligations to the national government, contributing to an estimated sector debt of Sh225.7 billion. Utilities losing nearly half their water can’t earn enough to maintain their networks, which causes more losses, which means even less revenue, a cycle that has trapped the sector for years.
There has been a policy response. The Kenya National Water and Sanitation Investment and Financing Plan (NAWASIP) 2022–2030 that was launched in March 2023, alongside a Conditional Liquidity Support Grant (CLSG II) targeting 34 water service providers, which has pushed their average cost coverage ratio from 96 to 99 per cent. A related results-based programme now ties funding for 19 counties and 33 utilities to verified performance against set indicators. These are encouraging signs, but they remain donor-anchored interventions layered on a system that still needs far greater domestic financing commitment.
Kenya is not the first country to grapple with high NRW. Several countries that once faced even greater water losses have successfully transformed their utilities through visionary leadership, sustained investment, and modern technology. Singapore, now a global benchmark in water management, maintains NRW at about 5 per cent through continuous infrastructure renewal, universal metering, digital monitoring, and a strong culture of accountability.
Kenya has already established NRW management standards, and several water service providers have demonstrated that significant reductions are achievable through targeted interventions. The challenge now is to scale these successes nationwide by making NRW reduction a national priority. Addressing NRW demands capital-intensive interventions that local utilities cannot typically finance through tariffs alone. To bridge this gap, the national government should establish a dedicated Water Infrastructure Renewal Fund within the national budget, specifically targeting the replacement of pipes laid before 1980. Beyond domestic allocation, Kenya should prioritise concessional loans and grants from development partners, which often bundle financing with technical assistance for smart metering and leak detection. The inaugural NRW Conference in Naivasha offers renewed hope.
