At the 2nd SWAN Cape Town Workshop, one message really resonated: Africa’s smart water future will not be determined by how much technology is available, but by whether utilities and cities can build the systems needed to use it well.
That shift felt important. Over three days, the conversation moved beyond the usual language of innovation and into something more practical. The workshop, which brought together around 200 participants from 97 organisations, kept returning to the same hard truth: the sector’s biggest constraints are not only technical – they are financial, institutional, and operational.
1. Water security is now an economic issue
The strongest framing came early. EY opened the workshop by positioning water security not only as a service delivery or environmental challenge, but as an economic one.
The numbers make the urgency hard to ignore. Around $7 trillion will be needed globally for water infrastructure by 2030, yet less than 2% currently comes from the private sector. In South Africa, a 17% increase in water scarcity could reduce GDP by up to 0.44% by 2030. The implication is clear: weak water systems do not just disrupt utilities, they affect growth, investment, and resilience.
What stood out to me most on Day 1 was how often the discussion returned to credibility. The challenge is not only a funding gap, it is a bankability gap. As several speakers reinforced, capital does not flow to need alone. It flows to institutions that can demonstrate governance, revenue discipline, and operational performance.
Refilwe Mokanse at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) described the role of development finance institutions in bridging this gap. As he put it, their role is often to “bank the unbankable,” taking projects that are not yet investment-ready and structuring them correctly so that they can attract funding.
From the City of Cape Town’s perspective, Siyabulela Bashe emphasised the importance of integrating resilience directly into financial planning. One remark stood out: “I build resilience by making sure climate risk never becomes a financial risk.” This reflects a shift in thinking, where climate adaptation is not treated as an external requirement, but as a core part of financial sustainability.
2. Digital transformation only works when the basics are in place
Day 2 exposed the implementation reality. This was probably the most practical part of the workshop for me.
Repeatedly, utilities made the same point: they do not necessarily lack data, they lack integration. Data is often scattered across billing systems, SCADA platforms, spreadsheets, dashboards, and asset registers, making it difficult to generate reliable operational intelligence.
That is why one quote stayed with me:“The technology works. The challenge is scaling it.” Moving from small demonstrations to city-wide systems requires far more than installing devices. It demands aligning infrastructure, data systems, governance, and customer engagement into a single, functioning ecosystem.
The smart metering session led by WRc Group, with contributions from Namibia Water Corporation, Leeroy Systems, and Ontec Systems, showed exactly what that means in practice. In Gaborone, Botswana the deployment of more than 30,000 smart prepaid meters increased billing efficiency from 65% to 98%, reduced non-revenue water by 18%, and achieved 99.95% data accuracy. That is what success looks like when metering, communication networks, data platforms, and billing systems work as one ecosystem.
However, the workshop was honest about the barriers too. In many regions, unreliable network coverage leads to incomplete data transmission, undermining both metering billing accuracy and customer trust. In the “Bridging the Digital Divide” panel, non-revenue water was identified as the largest source of lost value, representing approximately 47% across many municipal contexts.
3. Resilience is institutional before it is digital
What I appreciated most about the workshop is that it never allowed digital transformation to become detached from governance.
Sessions on reform, collaboration, and workforce innovation made it clear that utilities cannot leap straight into AI, digital twins, or predictive analytics if they lack the basics: credible data, functioning asset registers, ring-fenced revenue, operational accountability, and teams with the confidence to adapt.
That was reinforced by the SWAN Forum Update, which showed digital maturity as a staged journey, from physical assets and sensing, to communication, data management, and finally data fusion and strategic outcomes. It was a useful reminder that real value sits at the intersection of people, processes, and technology, not in any one tool alone.
Conclusion
What stayed with me after the SWAN Cape Town 2026 Workshop is this: Africa does not lack promising technologies, strong examples, or committed institutions. What it still needs, at scale, are utilities and cities that can connect finance, governance, data, and operations into systems that are credible enough to invest in and practical enough to run.
That is what made this workshop valuable. It did not romanticise smart water. It made it tangible, which to me, is where the real opportunity now lies.
Interested in learning more about the workshop? Access all the slides, recordings and photos HERE
