Water.org unveils plan to invest over Sh178 m in Kenya, Uganda projects

NAIROBI, KENYA: Water.org, a nonprofit developmental aid organisation, has announced plans to invest over Sh178 million ($2m) in WaterCredit programmes in the next one year to ensure accessibility to safe water and sanitation in Kenya and Uganda.

The organisation is also looking to expand the WaterCredit programmes by working with a diverse set of financial institution partners and funders to attract additional capital to the WaterCredit ecosystem. So far, Equity Bank, Kenya Women Finance Trust, SMEP and Post Bank Uganda have developed water and sanitation products after successful market assessment and prototype development.

According to Director of International Programmes Richard Thorsten, as of August this year, the organisation had invested over Sh860 million ($9.7m) in WaterCredit programmes in Kenya, Uganda, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Peru, offering more than 370,000 loans, benefiting more than 1.6 million people.

WATER CREDITS

He said the organisation is keen on identifying and prioritising new markets and models for WaterCredit expansion; including new products and channels for deployment and directing “smart subsidies” to microfinance institutions to establish WaterCredit portfolios.

“Water.org now has seven microfinance partners engaged in WaterCredit in Kenya and Uganda, and we expect to bring on board a few other MFIs in Ethiopia before the end of this year,” said Dr Thorsten. The organisation and MasterCard Foundation is planning a two-day conference in Nairobi later this month to discuss about lasting solutions to the lack of access to safe water and sanitation.

The two-day WaterCredit forum dubbed “Lend for Change” will bring together leaders from the water, sanitation and finance sectors participants from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. One objective of the Forum is to identify and help remove barriers to lending for WaterCredit.

Another is to offer both knowledge and toolkits to encourage other organisations to use WaterCredit as part of their efforts to bring safe water and sanitation services to those who need them.