The challenge
In Kenya, a key barrier preventing Water Service Providers (WSPs) from delivering safe water on a sustainable basis is the high cost of energy and unreliable grid connections, especially in rural areas. A solution to this is to use well-established solar technology to power water pumps which results in significant cost reductions and higher throughput. However, WSPs typically lack the capital to finance the installation and the local banking sector is wary of financing the water sector.
Our approach
We are supporting Epicenter to partner with community WSPs and drive performance improvement, chiefly solarisation, data collection, digitalisation and reduction in non-revenue water.
The programme will finance these upgrades with WSPs repaying the capex investment over 3–5 years through cost savings and increased revenues generated by the projects. Epicenter’s partner, InfoCap, will oversee repayment performance and provide ongoing financial monitoring.
Targets
- Solarise and improve financial viability of 18 community WSPs in 5 years.
- Over $500,000 of financing disbursed by 2030.
- Keep facility default rate under 10%, incentivising additional financiers to support the scale-up.
What’s next
By 2030, we aim to scale up this facility in Kenya to enable more WSPs to access capital for solarisation and other viability improvement projects on a pay-as-you-go basis using blended finance.