Upper Tana Nairobi Water Fund Maturity Phase Resources

In 2015, The Nature Conservancy launched the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund (UTNWF) to help secure Nairobi’s primary water source. This watershed’s primary river, the Tana, supplies 95% of the water for Nairobi's 4 million residents and another 5 million people living upstream of the watershed. It also feeds one of the country's most important agricultural areas and provides over half of the country's hydropower output. For this reason, TNC and UTNWF partners have since worked with thousands of farming households throughout the watershed to reduce erosion and ensure more clean water in free-flowing rivers guided by a well-articulated business case.

The now-independent Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund is focused on ensuring that the communities whose lives depend on Tana’s water can meet all dimensions of water security. From domestic water security that will provide people with reliable, safe water and sanitation services to economic water security that will support the productive use of water to sustain economic growth in food production, industry, and energy sectors of the economy. And all this while protecting the biodiversity found within the watershed through engagement with the farming communities that live in the watershed. The success of the UTNWF means that it is now being replicated in twelve other geographies across Africa.

The UTNWF and TNC team prepared materials with the objective of; harvesting best practices from the UTNWF transition process, using the developed resources to strengthen knowledge management during the water fund maturity stage, and offering ready-to-use templates for future transition needs and learning. The files were reviewed by Evelyne Karanja and Lyraya Schablein of The Nature Conservancy.