Nairobi – Over 100 virtual participants attended the inaugural webinar hosted by 2030 WRG together with the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) on Friday, 26^th February. The series of three webinars aims to highlight business opportunities for private companies in the Kenyan water sector, bringing together public and private sector actors to deliberate on the opportunities that exist as well as develop strategies to take to scale proven innovations.

The first webinar focused on opportunities within the water supply and sanitation sub-sector and explored private-public-partnerships (PPPs) as a mechanism to help strengthen the resilience of urban water supply services.

Under Sustainable Development Goal 6, Kenya has committed itself to achieve by 2030 universal and equitable access to safe and affordable water and sanitation for all. For a country classified as a middle-income economy, Kenya’s performance on water and sanitation indicators is weaker than expected, and the situation is worsening as the population increases. Despite some progress over the last decade only 59% of Kenyans have access to basic water services and only 29% have access to sanitary services.[1]

The country’s water utilities, meanwhile, are increasingly facing a multiplicity of challenges including high energy costs, low revenue streams, high volumes of network water losses attributed to ageing water infrastructure, inefficient billing systems, illegal connections and a sub-optimal asset management regime.  These pre-existing systemic constraints have been compounded further by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic’s impact on urban utility services has served to highlight the underlying weak resilience and weak adaptive capacity of the utilities. Beyond the pandemic, significant recovery efforts will be needed to build back more resilient water utilities while expanding access to water and sanitation services.

The virtual event provided participants with an overview of the opportunity landscape in WSS, and explored finance and technology opportunities for PPPs in water and sanitation services; presented the policy, legal and regulatory framework for private sector investment in water and sanitation service provision, and identified existing bottlenecks to increasing private sector participation in the provision of water and sanitation services.

The next webinars in the series will focus on expanding farmer-led irrigation and wastewater and circular economy, respectively.

If you would like to attend either of these virtual events, please sign up to the Kenya partnership mailing list to receive an invitation.

Webinar #2: Expanding Farmer-Led Irrigation in Kenya

A discussion on how best to scale farmer-led irrigation development (FLID)

Session A: 10:30am – 1:00 pm EAT, Friday 12 March

Click here to register

Webinar #3: Wastewater and circular economy

Leveraging public-private-partnerships to mainstream a circular economy approach in wastewater management in Kenya

10:30am – 12:00 pm EAT, Friday 26 March

Participation is free of charge.

[1] WHO, UNICEF, 2019, WASH Joint Monitoring Programme Report.