Pictet Group
From no water to smart sensors, how one tap can change the lives of twenty people
Our field trip takes us to Southern Zambia where we meet Reuben who is Senior Country Manager at WSUP and takes us to Ngwenya and Burton, two low-income communities to show us how one tap can change the lives of whole families.
At over 2,500 km the Zambezi is one of Africa’s longest rivers. It flows through six countries, from Northern Zambia to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique and provides water to over 30 million people. The river also helps to generate 80% of Zambia’s electricity through hydroelectric power, mainly thanks to the Kariba Dam, so its continued existence is crucial.
Due to successive droughts, the level of the Zambezi and, by extension, the Kariba Lake, Africa’s largest manmade lake, have continuously decreased. As a result, the hydroelectric plants have less water to generate electricity. “Zambia has had to introduce load-shedding, which means people may only have electricity for up to twelve hours a day,” says Reuben Sipuma, Senior Country Manager at Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). The load shedding is as unpredictable as the flow of the river, which in turn impacts the availability of clean water making daily life very difficult.
Intermittent power disrupts the extraction of water for consumption, from drinking and cooking to washing and watering crops. Sudden power outages also damage the infrastructure such as water pumps and pipes, which are not adapted to decreasing water levels.
Occasionally people don’t make it back from the river, attacked by crocodiles.
WSUP was founded in 2005 to help cities struggling with rapid growth to provide basic services like toilets and clean water to low-income areas. The organisation works with local providers to build infrastructure, design services, and secure funding. WSUP aims to make these services profitable for and accessible to the poorest urban residents.
The 14,000 residents of the poor neighbourhood of Ngwenya on the outskirts of Livingstone, may have access to water for just 4-6 hours per day, including those who have access to a tap at home or at a neighbour’s. Women (in most cases) must walk 3 km to fetch water. They wake up at dawn and carry heavy water containers. Childcare and food preparation must wait until later in the day. Children’s education is affected as a result. In part because they spend more time in helping their families to fetch water, but the lack of hygiene facilities mean girls often skip school during menstruation periods.
Without reliable water from the utility, households can end up spending up to 20% of their monthly budget on buying water from water kiosks or neighbours. For those who choose to collect water directly from the river, their water comes with risks. “Occasionally people don’t make it back from the river, attacked by crocodiles,” says Reuben. There is also the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
In these low-income communities, people often take matters into their own hands, illegally tapping into the water supply with poor-quality ‘spaghetti pipes’. This contributes to a staggering 50% water loss countrywide, caused by leaks and water theft.
Due to aging infrastructure and illegal piping, 50% of water is lost across Zambia.
After three days of meeting people in the field, the phrase at the top of my mind is “Water is life”. For those of us living in northern latitudes, it’s a reality check. The 24/7 availability of cheap drinking water is mainly taken for granted. The situation is very different in Zambia and many other countries where WSUP operates, where 40% of the population does not have access to basic drinking water. But even with access, the main issue is the continuous availability of water.
Christine Muzeya lives in Burton, another low-income community near Ngwenya. Since 2018, she and her family, have access to safe drinking water thanks to a tap installed in front of her house with support from Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP).
Though underprivileged Zambians do not all have access to power or water, most own a phone. They receive their water bill via text message and pay with just a few clicks. “We’ve mostly gone paperless and cashless. We’ve also introduced tiered pricing, so customers like Christine pay lower water prices compared to people in more affluent areas,” says Gift Monde, Managing Director at the Southern Water and Sanitation Company (SWSC), the utility provider that installed the household water taps in Burton, in partnership with WSUP.
People in low-income communities generally do not have identity papers nor much contact with the authorities. Once they become a paying customer with the water authority, they become visible.
Back in Ngwenya, villagers are digging over 12 kilometres of trenches to lay down new pipes. “Hiring people from the community gives them ownership over the project and an additional income”, says Reuben Sipuma, Senior Country Manager at WSUP.
The WSUP and SWSC teams, with representatives from the Pictet Group Foundation.
When the pipe network finally reaches households, taps are usually secured with a padlock to prevent water theft. Individual meters are installed to monitor water consumption and users are charged per use rather than a flat fee, minimising water waste. As a result, residents are more accountable and more likely to invest in maintaining their household water connections.
To ensure the infrastructure works for the long term, 'smart’ sensors are installed in key locations throughout the pipe network. The sensors alert the infrastructure maintenance team of any leaks and their location so they may be fixed quickly. In this way, another project led by WSUP in Antananarivo, Madagascar, saved over a billion liters of water, the equivalent of two full-sized oil tankers (the large ships you can see from an airplane window).