Despite the importance of water supply and improved sanitation for achieving progress in most of the health-related MDGs, the water and sanitation situation in Kenya is far from satisfactory. Sustainable access to safe water is presently estimated to be 60% in urban settings and 40% in rural settings. However, these figures are only rough estimates as the real figures cannot be confirmed due to lack of a database on water and sanitation coverage, particularly in low-income urban settlements. It has been envisaged that the figures could be as low as 20%. The stark truth is that more than half of the urban populations reside in these settlements and they are fast growing. The MajiData project is a major contribution to efforts to improve the current water and sanitation monitoring regime as it aims to prepare a database on water supply and sanitation covering all low-income urban areas in Kenya. Its objective is to carry out a pro-poor mapping exercise to collect data on low-income urban areas and establish a pro-poor database. The database enables national authorities to include low-income areas in current coverage levels at various levels (area level, town level, Water Services Board area level, provincial level and national level) and to anchor key indicators in real data. The important h2.0 Initiative component is being implemented by the Water Service Trust Fund of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, in cooperation with UN-Habitat, the Google foundation and the German Development Cooperation GTZ.
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