The Government of Kenya (GoK) through the Ministry of Water and Sanitation has in the last over 15 years, implemented reforms in the water sector to address gaps which have hindered the effective delivery of water and sanitation services in the country. The result, among others, has seen the decentralization of Water Service Provision to the county governments. New policy under the Water Act 2016 has initiated a second wave of reforms that requires transformation in line with the devolved system of government and ensure the right of access to water for every Kenyan as enshrined in the constitution.

In an endeavor to achieve universal access to water and sanitation, the Ministry has drawn a road map to universal coverage by the year 2030 by undertaking key projects and programs that will connect 200,000 people to water and 350,000 to sewer annually throughout the country. These efforts however continue to neglect rural marginalized communities particularly in the arid and semi-arid (ASAL) counties of Kenya, mainly due to the high cost of piping water to remote areas coupled with the lack of financial resources to do so.

Government efforts for rural communities have traditionally been more reactive than preventive, to a greater extent short sighted e.g. the allocation of KShs650million to the ministry of water (out of Kshs6B allocated for drought mitigation) to be used for emergency water tracking services, repair of boreholes, rehabilitation and extension of water supply pipelines and supply of plastic and collapsible water tanks for the affected communities. Such efforts by far and wide will benefit rural communities minimally in the long term, leaving these communities still vulnerable to future climate induced emergencies such as drought. To counter this, a more resilient approach to programming needs to be adopted.