Glory Chirwa, 22, smiles broadly as she fills her bucket at a tap stand near her home in Jamu Village, Traditional Authority Mzikubola in Mzimba.
In the area that receives less rain, new pipes have been delivering clean water to Ruviri Trading Centre and surrounding villages since 2023.
“Fetching water for my family was hard labour,” says the mother of one. “I used to rise before my husband to make long trips to communal hand pumps where I had to wait for three to four hours and sweat hard to get water. But all that is history since piped water arrived in my backyard two years ago.”
Chirwa was speaking at one of the 92 taps that supply about 13 500 people in six villages.
Policy shift
Malawi Government installed the Msaka Solar-powered Water Scheme under the Malawi Resilience and Disaster Risk Management Project, funded by the World Bank. The project was motivated by the devastating drought of 2015 to 2018 which left water points dry in several parts of the country.
The pipes that lace the rural setting like blood vessels delivering oxygen to vital organs exemplifies a new policy toprovide piped water to the country’s rural majority long supplied by hand pumps.
Policymakers envision the pipelines accelerating the provision of safe water for all in line with the Malawi2063 development strategy and Sustainable Development Goal number four.
“Malawi, has embarked on an ambitious journey to achieve universal access to safely managed water supply by 2030. This has prompted government, through the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, to adopt a policy shift to piped water, which is more accessible than the once-touted boreholes,” reads a policy brief.
The ministry is expected to construct 193 solar-powered small piped water schemes like Msaka by 2028. This translates to one per constituency and 21 have been taking shape since 2023.
“When fetching water, a single trip, both to and from the nearest water point, should cover more than 500 metres or 30 minutes. The plan is that each tap should serve no more than 150 people, down from 250 per borehole,” says Secretary for Water and Sanitation Elias Chimulambe.
He said cutting long walks and waiting for water in crowded hand pumps will free up more time for Malawians to improve their families, businesses, crops and public life.
Chirwa says she is already reaping the benefits of the policy shift.
Until 30 years ago, her area was supplied by a gravity-fed piped system established in 1974.
However, it has been rusting in disuse since 1995—seven years before her birth—when it was blocked by mud from riverside croplands. The new pipeline gives her a taste of a glorious past that she could only covet.
“Thanks for bringing water closer,” she says. “The hand pump was too far and forced many people to draw drinking water from unprotected wells in Kaunga and Ruviri streams. We often looked dirty to spare the hard-won water.”
For women who often left home around 4am and returned at 7am, there was little time to rest.
“Now, we save plenty of time for uplifting our lives and participation in community events,” says Chirwa, cuddling her two-year-old daughter, Shupe.
She urges Malawians to conserve the environment and protect water facilities to avert water crises like the one she has grown up with.
The water stress was compounded by frequent environmental degradation in the semi-arid setting.
“Almost three decades after the old piped water system ran dry, boreholes remain far apart due to low water table and scanty investment in water supply for rural communities,” says Msaka Water Users Association chairperson Brown Manda.
New reality
The inroads supported by partners like World Bank shine a light on a new policy direction to close the gap.
The Msaka Solar-powered Water Suply Scheme, which was launched by President Lazarus Chakwera last year, does not just serve surrounding villages and markets.
It also supplies learners and teachers at Ruviri and Kaunga primary schools as well as patients, guardians and health workers at Ruviri Under-five Clinic.
“The water is reducing waterborne infections in our community, saving the hours people here, especially women and children, used to waste on long walks to the rivers and hospitals,” says Manda.
At Msaka, 57 solar panels produce electricity from sunlight to power six pumps that fill a 150-cubic-metre tank in four hours.
The government switched to groundwater after discarding the hugely silted intake on the old gravity-fed system constructed on Ruviri River.
Manda recalls. “Soil erosion and population pressure led to the closure of the intake, giving way to nearly three decades of drinking brownish water from soiled rivers.
NEXT: How is the new policy trickling from Capital Hill to the farthest rural communities?
