Accelerating Safe Water and Sanitation Access in Urban Periphery and Low-Income Areas: The Case of Kenya

Abstract

Achieving universal water and sanitation access by 2030 - Kenya’s Vision 2030 and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, remains challenging for Kenya, especially in urban low-income and periphery areas. Only 23% of low-income are served by licensed utilities. Most are served by small-scale water service producers (SSSPs), who struggle to produce safe water and sanitation despite wide coverage, posing significant public health and other risks. Aiming to increase the understanding of SSSPs as potential water producers, ten SSSP managers from the Nairobi Metropolitan Region were interviewed. The managers find the costs of licensing compliance, taxes, and levies to be inhibitive and anticipate more proactivity and resources from the government. The authors suggest that the institution is flawed in overlooking SSSPs, and their regulation needs reviewing. Yet, as licensing requirements should not be reduced, SSSPs should embrace the clustering policy, and the government should consider subsidies to supplement SSSPs’ resources.