Kenya is a water scarce country with per capita water availability estimated at 647m3/year against a globally recommended level of 1000m3/year. The growing water demand arising from a growing population (currently estimated at 53million people), climate change effects, rapid urbanization and poor management of Kenya’s water resources has aggravated the water scarcity situation in Kenya. Proper management and monitoring of Kenya’s surface and ground water resources is at the heart of effective and efficient water use regulation, to ensure fair and equitable allocation and apportionment of the available water resources to every Kenyan.
Kenya Innovative Finance Facility for Water (KIFFWA) with funding from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Nairobi, and Earthview Management Limited are financially and technically supporting the Water Resources Authority (WRA) to tap into the Internet of Things (IoT) to implement an Advanced Smart Metering Infrastructure network. Smart Water Metering is an advanced metering solution consisting of digital water meters and a secure web platform allowing remote monitoring and control of water supply particularly accessible to water abstractors and the WRA. The infrastructure will positively impact on the WRA’s mandate to effectively regulate and monitor water use and conservation of river basins and catchment areas across the country. In an article published on the WRA website(https://wra.go.ke/smart-meters/), the Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Shurie, said that, “the advanced smart metering infrastructure will eliminate the use of ordinary meters that were prone to tampering and malfunctioning and enable the Authority to receive abstraction data from across the country in real/near real time to a central server”. John Kinyanjui, WRA Manager in charge of water assessment and monitoring said, “that improved compliance with water abstraction and water use permit conditions, will impact positively on WRA’s regulatory framework and assure viability of future water resources development projects”.
KIFFWA will continue to support both private and public water sector players, through innovative financing mechanisms to adopt smart technologies that contribute to better water resource management.
