right to water – Rural Water Supply Network

Featured photo: Daily, millions of girls and women in Kenya walk for water, losing time, safety, and opportunity. Photographer: Euphresia Luseka

Blog by Euphresia Luseka, co-lead of the RWSN Leave No-one Behind theme.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) or its Executive Committee.

A Walk Before Dawn

At five in the morning, Busia County, Kenya is still wrapped in silence. But Jeruto is already walking. Fourteen years old, barefoot, a yellow jerrycan pressed into her hip. Three kilometres to water, three kilometres back.

She knows this path by heart. She also knows it is never safe. Men wait in the shadows. The price of water is sometimes not money but dignity. By the time she returns, the day has already slipped away; half her classes gone, her body exhausted, her hope dimmed.

“I was afraid,” she says. “But what choice did we have?”

This is the reality of women and girls without drinking water supplies on the premises every day stolen by the simple act of survival. And yet, here is the cruel paradox; when decisions are made about water, women are nowhere in the room. They carry the heaviest burden but hold the least power. The sector is still led by men.

That irrationality is finally being challenged. In western Kenya, three men, yes, men are ripping up the old rules of water and power. They are saying: enough. Not with platitudes, not with empty gender policies that gather dust, but with radical reforms that change who gets to sit at the table, who gets paid, who gets promoted, who gets heard.

And the truth they have stumbled into is this; Gender equity is not tokenism. It is infrastructure. It is resilience. It is the difference between a girl chained to a jerrycan and a girl being educated.

When Water Becomes Opportunity

The revolution begins small. For Jeruto, it started with the hum of a drilling rig. Just metres from her school gate, the Lake Victoria North Water Works Development Agency (LVNWWDA) sunk a borehole. Water surged from the ground, and with it, time, safety, and dignity returned to her life.

The 3 hours she once lost on the road became minutes. Within a year, girls’ local schools’ attendance had risen by nearly 30 percent.

For Joel Wamalwa, the agency’s CEO, this borehole was not just a piece of engineering. It was a revelation.

“Water unlocks education, strengthens health, reduces risks of violence, and frees women’s time for work and enterprise,” he says. “When women are included in planning and leadership, water systems become not only more equitable but more sustainable.”

Water, he insists, is not only a service. It is a multiplier.

Joel Wamalwa, CEO LVNWWDA says water is a Multiplier, Photographer: Euphresia Luseka

The Paradox of Exclusion

And yet, Joel has spent much of his career staring at a contradiction that borders on absurd. Women carry the heaviest weight of water scarcity rationing supplies, absorbing the stress of breakdowns, managing survival when systems fail. They are the first to wake, the last to sleep, the ones who walk the farthest.

But when utilities gather to make decisions on staffing, on budgets, on infrastructure women are almost invisible.

“We made choices about them without them,” he says quietly. “That was not only unjust. It was inefficient.”

The numbers from Mckinsey back him up. Utilities with gender-diverse leadership are 21 per cent more profitable. Boards with women deliver up to 95 per cent higher returns. For Joel, the conclusion is obvious: “Equity is not compliance. It’s not tokenism. It’s strategy.”