The main building block of the NRW initiative is to provide capacity support to beneficiary utilities to develop and implement SMART strategies...

SNV supports urban water utilities in Kenya to improve their technical, commercial and financial performance, with a focus on three thematic areas; 1) Revenues enhancement, 2) Consumer engagement for downward accountability and, 3) Promotion of Private sector participation in water services delivery.

In revenue enhancement, SNV focuses on strengthening commercialization initiatives by Utilities, while expanding service provision to the poor and the un-served populations. One of these initiatives is to reduce Non-Revenue Water (NRW),  the single most important factor challenging financial sustainability. A currently ongoing project for addressing NRW in Kenya is supporting ten water utilities in Kenya reduce NRW losses. The project is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for a two-year period 2014 - 2015. Implementation is led by SNV in collaboration with local and International Partners, and aims to increase access to safe water to 139,000 people in Kenya. More so, target those living in urban and peri-urban areas but yet to be connected to water services despite residing within the water utilities infrastructure footprint.

The main building block of the NRW initiative is to provide capacity support to beneficiary utilities to develop and implement SMART strategies and action plans for NRW management in localised pilot areas, and in so doing, adopt innovative solutions and proven best practices. Further, the project is facilitating a utility-led quarterly peer-learning platform for sharing of gained experiences and emerging lessons with the wider Kenya water sector audience.

Through this project, beneficiary water utilities are well on a sustainability path due to reduced NRW losses that in turn has had a multiplier effect of positively influencing quality of services, volume of revenue collection, services coverage and essentially their long-term commercial viability. So far, participating utilities have reported varying levels of increased service coverage, reduced NRW losses, increased revenues and reliability of water services.