More Water, More Life for Families in Wajir

For Meimuna Ismael, a 23-year-old mother living in a homestead of 23 people in Bulla Kurman, Griftu, every morning used to begin the same way. A two-kilometre walk in 40-degree heat, jerrycans on her back because a donkey cost money she did not have. Five jerrycans cost KSh 100. Ten cost KSh 200. It was never enough. Cooking, washing, planting: all of it had to be calculated against what water remained.

That changed in June 2025. Through the More Water More Life project, a joint effort by the Wajir County Government, Kenya's Ministry of Water and UN Kenya through UNDP and UNICEF, a new water supply system arrived in Griftu. The system now serves more than 9,200 people and nearly 5,000 livestock.

At its core is a 454-metre borehole, one of the deepest in East Africa, identified through groundwater mapping. A solar-powered pump draws 6,000 litres an hour into two 60,000-litre tanks, supplying households, livestock troughs and water kiosks across the community. A pipeline links the borehole to the wider Griftu network, managed by the Wajir Water and Sewerage Company, ensuring access does not depend on a single point of failure.

The project is built for permanence. Training and governance support have been embedded into the system design, with maintenance protocols and community oversight structures established from the outset. Pro-poor tariff structures are in development across Wajir and neighbouring ASAL counties, protecting low-income users from being priced out of the services they most need.

"When we heard water was available, we were so happy," Meimuna says. "For the first time, I thought about planting and growing crops."

Across Kenya in 2025, 955,811 people gained access to clean water through UN-supported interventions spanning 19 counties.

This story is one part of a much larger picture. Across Kenya in 2025, 955,811 people gained access to clean water through UN-supported interventions spanning 19 counties. In ASAL communities, 49,326 households were engaged around shared water infrastructure, strengthening local ownership and collective management. And a catalytic grant of USD 1.2 million from the SDG Multi-Partner Trust Fund Kenya helped unlock USD 20 million from the Global Climate Adaptation Fund, extending the reach of water investments to more than a million additional Kenyans.

In 2026, the focus will be on sustaining these gains through institution-building at the county level, ensuring that water access in Kenya's driest regions is a right maintained by functioning systems, not a lifeline dependent on emergency response.

Read the full 2025 UN Kenya Annual Results Report for the complete picture of how water access was expanded across Kenya.