NAIROBI, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Kenya on Thursday placed a bid for private firms to develop 100 dams countrywide amid intensified efforts to tackle water scarcity occasioned by climate change and population pressure.
Alice Wahome, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Water, Sanitation, and Irrigation, said the government will provide financial incentives and a conducive regulatory environment for private companies to develop water storage and irrigation infrastructure.
"We have embarked on a process of increasing the water storage capacity that includes the construction of 100 large dams through the public-private partnership model in order to mobilize additional resources for investments in the sector," Wahome said during an investors conference in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
To win bids for developing the 100 dams, private companies must demonstrate financial autonomy, technical expertise, and commitment to environmental conservation, Wahome said.
Kenya's total water storage capacity for hydropower, domestic use and irrigation stands at 5.03 billion cubic meters, translating into 107 cubic meters per capita, below the recommended global average of 1,500 cubic meters per capita, Wahome said.
She added that increasing water storage capacity in the country in the face of soaring demand for the commodity-linked to rapid population growth, intensive farming, and industrialization, required innovative financing and policy realignment.
Wahome noted that Kenya's annual per capita freshwater endowment estimated at 406 million cubic meters in 2022 risks declining further due to recurrent droughts, depletion of catchments and unregulated extraction of the commodity.
She said that President William Ruto's commitment to building 100 dams to cater for domestic water supply and irrigation will be implemented in full, so as to realize a people-centered economic transformation agenda.
At present, Kenya has seven large dams with an estimated 3.976 billion cubic meters of stored water for hydropower generation and another 99 medium and over 3,000 small dams and pans with a storage capacity of 160.25 million cubic meters of water for domestic supply and irrigation, Wahome said.
She said that five large dams that are currently under construction will add 894 million cubic meters of water, and boost access to the commodity in the mushrooming rural towns. ■
