Loitokitok, Kajiado County
In April 2023, the Bondeni Community Water Project switched on a solar-powered borehole system, installed through a partnership between Africa In Store (AIS), GIZ, and Solargen. At the time, it meant relief from years of unpredictable, expensive diesel and grid power. Three years later, the community is showing what that relief has grown into.
“Accessing water once meant sacrifice,” says John Kariuki, Chairman of the Bondeni Community Water Project. Long queues, rationed hours, and a borehole that had sat idle for two years before the solar upgrade — that was the reality households and farmers built their lives around.
What’s Changed on the Ground
Today, the picture looks different. “And now we can provide people with water for twelve hours, twice a week,” Kariuki says — double what the community managed before.
That extra supply isn’t just filling jerry cans. Families are growing vegetables in kitchen gardens. Farmers are watering livestock and crops that once went dry between rains. And as the system has matured, it’s reaching further — supplying more homes and more farms across Bondeni than it did at installation.
For a community that fundraised its way to a borehole back in 2019, then watched two years of diesel and grid costs stall the project before solar brought it back to life, this is the payoff: not just a working system, but one that keeps expanding what’s possible for the people who rely on it.
A Model Others Are Watching
Kariuki credits the partnership for making the shift possible. “To facilitate modern energy access, a sustainable future is possible,” he says — a line that captures what’s become the throughline of Bondeni’s story: a community-led project, backed by the right technical and financial partners, that didn’t just survive its early struggles but kept growing after them.
For AIS, Bondeni remains one of the clearest examples of what solarization can do for community water infrastructure over time — not just in the first year of savings, but years into operation, as usage grows and more households come to depend on it.
New to Bondeni’s story? Read how the project got started and the financial impact of the original solar installation in our 2024 case study: How the Bondeni Community Turned Water Challenges into Success.
AIS continues to work with communities, schools, and dispensaries across Kajiado to solarize the infrastructure they depend on most.
Want to know what a solar water system could do for your community, institution, or farm? Get in touch with AIS.