© FAO/Alyne Spencer
WaPOR activities in Kenya
Kenya is a water-stressed country with a per capita freshwater volume of about 527 m3 while the UN has defined 1000 m3/capita as the threshold for water scarcity. Per capita freshwater availability by 2030 is estimated to further decrease at 475 m3 per year.
Kenya is largely an agricultural economy, with the sector contributing about 34% of the total gross domestic product and another 27% through linkages with other sectors such as manufacturing, distribution, and services. Agricultural production is mainly rainfed, with only about 4% of the total arable land irrigated, 70% of which is irrigated by small-scale irrigation systems. Yet, agriculture is also the largest water user, accounting for about 70% of total freshwater withdrawals.
Project partners in Kenya
🚰 Ministry of Water Sanitation and Irrigation
💧 State Irrigation Department
📈 Water Productivity Improvement
🚜 National Irrigation Authority (NIA)
🌾 Large and Public Irrigation Schemes
🏛️ County Governments (Small Irrigation Schemes)
💧 Small-scale Irrigation Performance Monitoring
📚 Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
🔬 Service Centre of the WaterPIP
Project
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📍 WaPOR pilot area in Kenya: Mwea irrigation scheme, Tana and Bura, Busia. |
Country resources
WaPOR: remote sensing for reducing agricultural water productivity gaps
29/10/2025
Flyer that introduces WaPOR to potential users and to stakeholders involved in the WaPOR project. It sheds light both on the project itself and the portal that contains the data.
WaPOR 2: using remote sensing in support of solutions to reduce agricultural water productivity gaps
06/07/2021
This flyer introduces WaPOR to potential users and to stakeholders involved in WaPOR projects. It sheds light both on the project itself and the portal that contains the data. It is also available in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic.
WaPOR for water accounting
04/11/2020
Water accounting is one tool that can assist with facing the challenges related to the sustainable use of our finite freshwater resources and it can be supported by easily-available open-access data. This case study aims to show how WaPOR (FAO’s portal to monitor Water productivity through open access of remotely sensed derived data) data can be used to support water auditing processes at different scales: the basin, the national scale and the subnational/scheme scale.
Water accounting in the Nile river basin
04/08/2020
The Nile River Basin faces a huge challenge in terms of water security. With an expected doubling of the population in the basin in the next twenty-five years, water supply in the basin will be further depleted as demands for agriculture, domestic and industry continues to grow. This report describes the water accounting study for the Nile River Basin carried out by IHE-Delft using the Water Productivity (WaPOR) data portal of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
Explore uses and applications of WaPOR data in Kenya.
WaPOR catalogue of applicationsLatest project updates in Kenya
WaPOR presented as a key tool to support SDG 6.4 monitoring efforts in Africa
17/07/2025
From 15 to 17 July 2025, a regional multi-stakeholder workshop on monitoring and reporting of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.4 on water...
.tmb-th600x400.jpeg?sfvrsn=e628ebe3_8 "WaPOR Programme Presentation at the SoilFER Project Technical Workshop in Kenya")
WaPOR presentation at the SoilFER project technical workshop in Kenya
11/07/2025
The SoilFER project, funded by the U.S. Department of State and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),...
WaPOR V3 training strengthens GIS and remote sensing capacity at Egerton University, Kenya
05/06/2025
From 3 to 5 June 2025, a three-day introductory training on the WaPOR Version 3 database took place at Egerton University...
PyWaPOR training in Delft on the use of remote sensing for agricultural water management
01/04/2025
The IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, a key partner in the WaPOR project, offered a short intensive course (workload of 84 hours) on Remote Sensing...
