In 2024, Beyond Water made significant strides towards ending water poverty in Malawi by 2030 through our innovative approach to sustainable water access. Through our social impact business model, we have served 223,860 people with Malawi's first professionalised repair and maintenance (PRM) service, transforming waterpoint functionality from 60% to 99% and ensuring better health, gender equality and climate resilient livelihoods for disadvantaged rural populations.
With over 40% of community water points being non-functional, 4.5 million Malawians are left without reliable access to safe water. Our management model provides a cost effective, accountable and sustainable service to waterpoint users. Financial viability is a critical component of our work, through scale we have decreased our costs per customer without compromising quality, providing long-term cost savings of 40% compared to community management approaches. In 2025, we will increase the breadth of our service by piloting piped water systems whilst working continuously to improve our service offering, paying particular focus to improving payment compliance and customer renewal rates. We look forward to expanding our reach in 2025 and moving towards eradicating water poverty in Malawi by 2030.
Objectives for 2025
- Grow Beyond Water’s business to reach approximately 409,000 people in 1,000 rural communities
- Maintain waterpoint functionality above 99% for our customers
- Repair 440 non-functional waterpoints, restoring safe water access to 40,082 people
- Increase our payment compliance rate to above 80%
- Maintain gender equality improvements by reducing the amount of time spent by women and girls collecting water, providing more time for education and productive output
- Increasing water security of rural villages in the face of climate change by providing support to adopt climate adaptation measures that protect groundwater supply
Sustainability
A key theme for our work in 2025 is sustainable development. Beyond Water puts long-term sustainability at the centre of all our work, highlighting the emphasis for scalability and financial viability. We prioritise the climate resilience of waterpoints through our locally led, scalable interventions. Beyond Water utilises a financial approach that improves income flows through affordable user contributions, government funds and performance-based payments, ensuring our long-term sustainability. With a focus on climate resilience and financial viability, we secure Malawian communities with reliable access to safe water access far beyond the point of initial interventions.
In 2025, we will work towards our ambition of having our PRM services in at least 10 districts of Malawi by 2026 and nationwide presence by 2030.
Learn more about our approach to reliable water access.