Former top World Bank official takes over as irrigation Principal Secretary

Engineer Patrick Mwangi Nduati

Nairobi, Kenya:  A former Senior World Bank official has taken over as the Principal Secretary for Irrigation at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation.

Engineer Patrick Mwangi Nduati, who was appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta late last year, was officially introduced today by the Cabinet Secretary for Water and Irrigation, Mr Eugene Wamalwa, at his Maji House offices.

Mr Nduati, brings to government a wealth of experience as a senior water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank Group’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) for over 10 years. His stint at the ministry is likely to be anchored on the key elements of pro-poor innovations and public-private partnerships (PPPs) that guided his work at the World Bank.

Wamalwa said Mr Nduati will steer the implementation of the one-million-acre Galana Kulalu irrigation project that is expected to improve food security in the country. Mr Nduati has worked in the water sector for over 20 years in different capacities.

At the World Bank, Mr Nduati led key technical assistance projects including a project targeted to provide sustainable access to sanitation and water services in selected low-income communities of Nairobi, by making pro-poor sewerage and water connections financially viable.

To date, the estimated 90,000 residents of Kayole Soweto village in the outskirts of Nairobi have running water and are in the process of having modern toilets in their homes.

 The village is among scores of informal settlements inhabited by almost two-thirds of the city’s four million people. Like other low-income settlements in Nairobi, Kayole Soweto village is sparsely served by piped water network. Today, Kayole Soweto residents read their water meters and directly paying for their bills through the Jisomee Mita platform comprising innovative ICT tools developed with WSP support.

Two World Bank programmes, the Water and Sanitation Service Improvement Project (WaSSIP) and the Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project (KISIP) are supporting the Athi Water Services Board (AWSB) and the NCWSC provide access to water and sanitation to 2,200 low-income households in Kayole Soweto.

Other informal settlements set to benefit from this initiative are Matopeni/Spring Valley, Maili-Saba, Kahawa-Soweto, Huruma, and Embakasi-River Bank located in Nairobi Eastlands and Northlands low-income areas.

The plan is to have 19,000 water connections serving 95,000 consumers, 140 water kiosks serving 40,000 consumers, 1,000 sewer connections serving 5,000 consumers and 30 public toilets serving 10,000 consumers.

Mr Nduati, a civil engineer, was also involved in the development of Kenya Urban Water and Sanitation fund for low-income areas in Malindi, Webuye, Kisumu, Eldoret and Kwale. The project is aimed at unleashing Kenya’s growth potential, reducing inequality and social exclusion and managing resource constraints and environmental challenges.

It seeks to leverage commercial financing for investments in water supply and sewerage, improving infrastructure to support city and county economies and provides output-based subsidies to connect the poor whose access to basic services might otherwise be constrained.

It is expected that during PS Nduati’s watch, the acreage under irrigation in Kenya will increase from the current 425,000 acres and the Galana Kulalu project remains a major platform from which to achieve this goal.

The National Irrigation Board (NIB) harvested 20,000 bags of maize in September 2015 from the first crop on 500 acres that was planted in May on the model 10,000 acre farm.

Large-scale production at the Galana Kulalu irrigation scheme will start in the next three years after the construction of a dam with a capacity to irrigate 500,000 acres. Currently River Galana can only irrigate 20,000 acres, which will increase after it is dammed.