The Future of Water Development in Africa is Here.

I've spent the last few weeks moving between Kenya and Tanzania, and I'm still processing everything I saw, heard, and learned. I’ve been working within multiple countries in Sub-Saharan Africa throughout the last 3 years, but I must say - this Kenya and Tanzania trip was different.  Nura itself isn’t new to this region either - the team has been engaged in Kenya and Tanzania’s water sector for years, and this trip built directly on that groundwork.

While I am more used to working in the rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, seeing more of the beneficiaries face to face, this time I was in back-to-back meetings with water utilities, NGOs, academics, government bodies, and operators who are working in conditions that most people in the water sector never actually see up close. 

The new program I’m leading at Nura Global Innovation Lab, the Water Access Catalyst, connects Israeli water technology with implementation partners across Sub-Saharan Africa. We work with partners on the ground to identify their biggest water challenges and connect them with proven Israeli technologies that already exist - so countries don't have to spend decades developing solutions that are already available.  

Why Israel? Well, Israel doesn’t have many sustainable sources of water (far less than could ever provide for today’s population) - as a country we basically found ways of creating it; and with that, incredible monitoring and maintenance of our system. Whether it’s the near perfected method of desalination, or monitoring every drop of water throughout the country, the technology that’s been developed and used throughout Israel is relevant to the developing water industry throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. 

This trip was part of our mission at Nura in the most direct way possible - my first major push to recruit the utilities, NGOs, and participating organizations who will shape the program from here. But as often happens when you spend real time in the field, you end up gaining a much deeper understanding of the realities on the ground. 

Kenya: Standing at the Intersection of Urgency and Momentum

I landed in Kenya for the WASPA conference on non-revenue water - a gathering of the country's water utility sector that turned out to be one of the most energizing professional experiences I've had.

NRW, or non-revenue water, is the water that enters a distribution system and never reaches a paying customer. It gets lost through leaks, illegal connections, faulty metering, and administrative gaps. I was surprised to learn that the average NRW across Kenya is 48%. Think about that for a second - nearly half of the water being pumped, treated, and pressurized never actually gets to the end consumer, and the utilities are essentially “losing” this water. The financial and operational implications are enormous - but perhaps even more, that 48%, if saved, could be serving more people throughout the country who do not currently have access to clean, safe drinking water at all. And it's not just a Kenyan problem. It's one of the defining infrastructure challenges of our time.

What struck me about the conference wasn't the scale of the problem - I knew that going in. It was the level of seriousness in the room, and the fact that all of these actors in the room were acknowledging the 48%, bringing visibility and awareness to it, holding themselves accountable, and actively looking for solutions to change the country’s situation as a whole - NOW. 

There was an Israeli trade mission present, coordinating with the Export Institute, and on behalf of Nura, I was invited to speak on a panel alongside utility directors, government representatives, and ecosystem leaders. Sitting on that stage, speaking to an audience of water professionals who were genuinely hungry for solutions, I felt the weight of what the gap between Israeli innovation and African implementation could - and should - close.

I left the panel with notes scribbled across three pages and a list of follow-up meetings that kept me busy for the rest of the week.

Those meetings - with utility managers, regulators, universities, and NGOs across Kenya - gave me something richer than any report could. 

I sat with a utility serving 150,000 people in hilly terrain with an NRW rate significantly higher than they'll officially admit. 

I met organizations with genuine investment capacity, real ecosystem visibility, and a very clear sense of where technology can and can't help. 

I spent time with researchers at Kenyatta and Meru universities, who are building sanitation institutes and running community programs with almost no data infrastructure to support them.

The picture that emerged wasn't one of a sector in crisis - it was a sector in transition. And transitions, handled right, are where the real opportunities live.

One Insight I Keep Coming Back To: Accountability Is No Longer Optional

Something shifted in the Kenyan water sector that I hadn't expected to find so clearly articulated in the field: accountability is becoming a competitive differentiator.

For years, water utilities across Sub-Saharan Africa operated in an environment where performance was rarely measured, rarely reported, and almost never tied to consequences. Donors funded infrastructure. Projects were built. Whether they worked - six months, two years, five years later - was largely anyone's guess, and you can see this from the thousands of “white elephants” plaguing the land.

That is changing…while it might seem slow, it’s exponential. Not everywhere, not uniformly, but the direction is clear and it's accelerating.

Kenya's water regulatory framework has become increasingly focused on performance benchmarks. The utilities I met with are being rated, published, compared, and awarded. The ones at the top of those rankings know it and talk about it with pride (check out their 2024/2025 Water Impact report, Issue 18). The ones lower down feel the pressure. There's a national conversation underway about what service delivery actually means - not just connection rates, but pressure, quality, continuity, cost, and impact.

This matters enormously for what the Water Access Catalyst is doing. When accountability increases, the demand for monitoring, metering, data systems, and leak detection stops being a nice-to-have and starts being a procurement decision. Israeli technology was built for exactly this environment - sensors, digital networks, NRW diagnostics, remote monitoring systems that can tell a utility in real time where it's losing water and why.

The technology has been proven, and it’s ready for adaptation. The political will is increasingly there. What's been missing is the structured pathway to bring the two together. That's the gap the Water Access Catalyst is trying to close.

Tanzania: An Ecosystem That Refuses to Be Underestimated

I crossed into Tanzania with slightly different expectations. Tanzania wasn't new territory for us - Nura followed the sector here for years - but this trip still reset a few assumptions for me personally. I'd heard the ecosystem was more fragmented and the entry points less. That's not what I found. If anything, Tanzania was easier to navigate than expected. 

The depth of the organizations I met - TAWASANET, WaterAid, Water for People, BORDA, CCI Tanzania, Oikos - wasn't just impressive in volume. Each of them brought a distinct perspective, a specific technical niche, and a level of ecosystem knowledge that only comes from years of serious field engagement. I had multiple actors from those organizations making connections that I hadn't asked for (because I didn’t know I needed), simply because they believed in what we were building, and every single one of those introductions are shaping the program today. 

What I found in Tanzania was not a developing ecosystem waiting to catch up. It was a mature, layered, complex network of organizations that have been doing serious work for years - mostly without the external recognition they deserve.

Dodoma: The City That Told Me Everything About Where Africa Is Going

If you want to understand the scale and speed of Sub-Saharan Africa's development trajectory, go to Dodoma.

Tanzania's capital city is in the middle of one of the most striking transformations I've witnessed on the continent. When the government relocated the capital from Dar es Salaam, few people took it seriously. But now, Dodoma is growing at a pace that its water infrastructure simply wasn't designed and prepared for. It's semi-arid. Resources are limited. And the population is expanding rapidly as the seat of government attracts institutions, workers, and investment from across the country. 

*Small side note, the train from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma was breathtaking and a top moment from the trip - if you get the chance, certainly take the train. 

I spent one of my days going to the field with an organization that is interested in participating in our program. They were showing me projects from both RUWASA, and their own, in the rural areas of Dodoma (about 2-2.5 hour drive). I was surprised to find us driving through rural vineyards next to these RUWASA water projects. I don't know why that hit me the way it did. Maybe because vineyards feel so specific, so intentional - I think Italy, France, California, Argentina, but here I am in Dodoma, Tanzania, finding out that it’s one of the best regions in Sub-Saharan Africa for wine production. Someone in this rural village decided that with reliable water, this land will grow something beautiful. That's the whole argument, right there on the side of the road. Just think what kind of place it could be with a large system of reliable water in the region. 

Several of the organizations I met were already working in Dodoma - Water Mission, WaterAid, SNV, Water for People. Each of them flagged it as a priority. The needs there are acute and specific: wastewater reuse that Israeli agricultural technology has been perfecting for decades, remote monitoring systems for a city whose network is growing faster than its management capacity, water quality treatment for a region where the baseline resource is under stress.

I sat in a meeting room in Dar es Salaam and listened to someone describe Dodoma's water challenge, and I thought: this is exactly the kind of problem Israeli water innovation was built to solve. The question isn't whether the technology exists. It's how fast we can implement the technology to reduce the crisis. 

What I Took Home

I came back with a fuller understanding of what this work actually requires. It's not about matching a product to a need on paper - it's about building relationships that are honest enough to survive the gap between what a technology promises and what a context demands. It's about sitting across from a utility director and understanding what their plans are for the future, what’s holding them back from larger impacts, and how you can build something sustainable together. 

The water sector in Kenya and Tanzania are not waiting to be saved. It's moving, building, adapting - often under enormous pressure and with limited resources - and it's looking for partners who understand that. Partners who come prepared, who stay in the relationship, and who have enough field literacy to know the difference between a genuine opportunity and a well-packaged sales deck.

I left with more follow-up meetings than I can manage in a single week, a long list of technology gaps that Israeli companies could address if the right introductions were made, and a renewed sense that the program we're building is pointed in exactly the right direction.

Now we just have to make sure we're moving fast enough to deserve the trust people are putting in it.

That trust is exactly what we’re asking more of now. We’re opening recruitment on both sides of this equation - African utilities, NGOs, and implementation partners in need of new technologies, and Israeli companies ready to adapt their product to where it’s needed most. If that’s you, this is your invitation to reach out!

If you think for a minute about what Africa is - the horizon it promises, the level of impact we can have with the right relationships, and the opportunity with this continent, your company should be in full sprint finding its venture here.

On a mission to make every drop count, 

Sophia