Water4 are committed to building and scaling durable market-based solutions and businesses, called NUMA, that empower people locally by creating more: safe water access, economic opportunity, virtue, and purpose across Africa, with businesses in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, and Zambia.
Water4 has invested $80M over the past 10 years in developing a service delivery model for safe, piped water services that is customer-reliant and able to scale, meeting the needs of rural communities without additional external subsidies after installation. This model has achieved a level of cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency unmatched in Sub-Saharan Africa, with plans in place to provide 10 million people with access to safe water services by 2033.
The Stone Family Foundation have provided grants and concessional loans to Water4 (and its subsidiary 4Ward) over three years to support the scale up of 4Ward’s modular piped water systems in North Ghana, Uganda and Sierra Leone.
Our support aims to demonstrate the ability for enterprises such as these to provide sustainable piped water systems at scale through market-based approaches. Evidencing ability to repay loans is a step for 4Ward to prove the ability of piped water providers to secure longer term finance whilst operating a piped water to the household business model.