Uganda’s ministry of Water and Environment (MWE) is celebrating the success of Water Umbrellas, a centralized small water schemes model, which has revolutionized their service delivery across the country.
Through these water umbrella associations, MWE officials say they are now delivering reliable water supply to hundreds of thousands of people in over 70 towns.
“The number of connections and [revenue] collections have increased twenty-fold,” Eng Herbert Nuwamanya, the assistant commissioner in charge of urban water and sewerage department in the ministry of Water and Environment, disclosed on February 18.
“The system is so effectively built that we even get web-based monthly reports about all their operations.”
Eng Nuwamanya made the revelations in his keynote address to the Africa Water and Sanitation (Afwasa) experts and stakeholders at the ongoing 2025 Afwasa Congress and Exhibition at the Speke Resort, Munyonyo in Kampala.
He was presenting the success of centralized management for sustainable water supply systems that the MWE, supported by the World Bank, has used to professionalize the Umbrella Water authorities.
The programme was rolled out in 2016 with 600 water schemes on pilot basis in small towns whose population ranged between 2,000 and 10,000 people. There are now over 1,200 water supply schemes, according to Nuwamanya.
The scheme authorities are charged with supplying water, maintaining the water sources, connections, marketing and revenue collection.
While the ministry of Water and Environment laid the infrastructure systems, trained the schemes’ officials and provided the technology. It also does continuous regular monitoring.
It is against such background that officials from other Afwasa member countries got keen interest in the Water Umbrellas system, which they want to replicate in the nations.
More than 2,000 officials who include water utilities managers, water technology experts, government ministers, UN agencies and civil society advocacy activists are attending the Afwasa Congress that ends on Thursday, February 20.
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