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Title
DFID - Smart Water Technical Report
Abstract
The global mobile communications revolution presents new opportunities to address water security
and poverty reduction challenges. In Africa, the number of people within range of a GSM signal
has already overtaken the number with an improved water supply, and by 2012 the number with a
mobile subscription will pass this same benchmark. In India, the number of mobile subscriptions is
twice the number of individual piped water connections. These milestones mark a new
technological era which can transform the way water services are paid for, operated and regulated
with the prospect of reducing the multi-billion dollar water service financing gap, crowding-in
investment and lessening the fiscal burden, particularly for low-income countries. Mobile banking
is already increasing financial access amongst low-income groups with emerging opportunities for
innovative saving and payment applications in the water service sector. Smart water metering is
rapidly being deployed across the industrialized world, and offers an untapped opportunity to
address systemic operational inefficiencies in developing regions and to govern water resource use
and allocation more effectively at scale. Based on a global literature review and proof-of-concept
fieldwork in Kenya and Zambia, we find compelling evidence that the confluence of mobile
network coverage expansion, wide-spread mobile phone ownership, innovative mobile banking
applications and smart metering technologies offer new, effective, low-cost and inclusive pathways
to water security and poverty reduction.
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