Grants and loans for health and water projects

Kenya is to receive a total of US $60.51 million dollars in grants and loans from the African Development Fund (ADF) for projects aimed at strengthening rural health facilities and improving water-supply and sanitation infrastructure in Rift Valley Province.

The ADF on Wednesday approved a loan of US $25.19 million, and a grant of $8.80 million to finance the Rural Health Project III in the country. The project is intended to support the government’s efforts to strengthen district health systems and reinforce community-based disease prevention and control services.

The project would be implemented in seven districts in three provinces, whose total population constituted 9.5 percent of the country's 31 million people, the ADF said in a statement.

The water and sanitation improvement project in the Rift Valley would receive a grant of $19.12 million and a loan of $7.4 million. It is intended to ensure equitable provision of adequate quantity and quality of water and sanitation services to all the user groups at affordable cost on a sustainable basis in Nakuru, Kenya’s fourth-largest town, and in urban, semi-urban and rural communities.

In Nakuru region, water supply is affected by insufficient and deteriorating infrastructure and weak institutional capacity to operate and maintain the facilities, as well as low rate of recovery of water bills.