Water loss management for utilities in low income countries: case studies from four African water utilities

The rapid increase in global population coupled with escalating climate change has led to a serious water scarcity in the world. The problem is more pronounced in urban areas and UN Habitat estimates that the proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas had grown to at least 50% by early 2007. Therefore, instead of focusing on supply management, urban water managers need to also adopt demand management. Water loss management in the distribution network will not only reduce demand, but has other important benefits. This paper describes a project by Water Utility Partnership (WUP) of Africa whose objective was to reduce non-revenue water (NRW) in four water utilities in sub-Saharan Africa. The project’s approach was based on the premise that NRW is only a consequence of deep-seated utility management challenges. Hence, through capacitybuilding partnerships, key staff in the participating utilities were facilitated to develop performance improvement plans (PIPs), which included establishment of pilot District Meter Areas (DMAs) for effective water loss management (WLM). The results of this project show that iterative and incremental pilot WLM projects could be an effective way of convincing uncertain senior managers of cash-trapped utilities in low income countries to allocate more resources for water loss management.