EWURA publishes every utility's water losses. The question is what your number will be next year.
Tanzania's regulator reports sector non-revenue water at 42.3% in FY2024/25 — up from 36.8% in a single year, with 75% of the loss attributed to apparent (commercial) losses rather than leaks — with regional utilities reaching past 40%, and Dar es Salaam's utility having lost tens of billions of shillings to unbilled water in past review cycles. EWURA has issued national NRW guidelines and ranks WSSAs publicly every year. addanode builds what moving that number actually requires: district metering, night-flow analysis, pressure monitoring and a daily production-versus-billing balance your engineers see on one dashboard — and your EWURA return can cite.
Three loss problems Tanzanian WSSAs recognise.
An annual percentage, but no monthly map
The EWURA performance review tells you your NRW once a year, in arrears, as one number. District metered areas — telemetered bulk meters on each supply zone — turn that number into a live league table of zones, so the loss programme works from current evidence instead of last year's aggregate.
Night flow that no meter reader will ever see
Between 2am and 4am legitimate demand is minimal; what still flows into a zone is mostly leakage and illegal use. Monthly manual reads are structurally blind to this — the single strongest leak indicator a utility owns. A telemetered inlet meter sees it every night, free, forever.
Physical or commercial? Different fixes, one dashboard
High night flow means pipes: send the leak crew. Normal night flow but a wide billing gap means meters and connections: send the inspection team and the metering lab. Zone data separates the two loss families cleanly, which is precisely what stops reduction budgets being spent on the wrong problem.
Built for Tanzanian utility reality.
- The prepaid wave changes the arithmetic. With a third of urban utilities and over a thousand villages already running prepaid metering, revenue collection is improving — which makes the remaining gap between production and vends increasingly a physical loss story. Zone metering shows exactly where, and pairs naturally with prepaid verification.
- The utility map is wide. From DAWASA-scale metro systems to district WSSAs, the same architecture scales down: two zones and five meters is a legitimate starting deployment for a district utility, priced accordingly.
- Power interruptions must not hole the record. With TANESCO executing major grid works and regional interruptions, metering nodes run on solar/battery and buffer locally — the night-flow history stays continuous through the very outages that stress the network.
- Existing instruments are read, not replaced. Pulse bulk meters, Modbus and 4–20 mA devices connect as-is; new metering goes only on zone inlets that have nothing. Reports export in clean tables for EWURA returns and board packs.
Sector figures are EWURA's and from published Tanzanian reporting. The deployment pattern is our Southern African utility build, adapted to WSSA structures and supply regimes.
From annual percentage to weekly worklist.
1 · Zone it
DMAs drawn with your engineers around tanks, boosters and trunk lines — sized to the scheme, whether metro or district.
2 · Meter & connect
Inlet meters and key pressure points telemetered (4G/LoRaWAN), solar-powered where grid is unreliable.
3 · Rank & act
Night-flow league table and billing-gap map route leak crews and inspectors to the zones where shillings are actually leaving.
4 · Report
Continuous records roll up into EWURA-ready numbers — measured, timestamped, and improving for reasons you can name.
First zone typically live in 2–6 weeks on the addaNet platform — alongside water telemetry where the same utility wants asset monitoring too.
EWURA's FY2024/25 numbers on one table
| Indicator | FY2023/24 | FY2024/25 | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-revenue water | 36.8% | 42.3% | Down 5.5 points; benchmark ≤20% |
| Share of loss that is commercial | — | 75% | Apparent losses — a measurement problem |
| Value of NRW above benchmark | — | TZS 182.6 billion | About three years of revenue growth |
| Metering ratio | — | down 1.1 points | Fewer customers metered while losses rose |
| Hours of supply | 14 / day | 14 / day | Unchanged |
Where loss data earns its keep in Tanzania.
Urban and district WSSAs — utilities whose NRW figure appears in the EWURA review every year, and whose improvement plans need measured evidence · Community-owned schemes — COWSOs and village systems where every unbilled litre is operating budget lost · Industrial and mining estates — sites reconciling bulk supply against internal distribution, often beside mining & cement monitoring · Bottlers and processors — high-volume water users verifying intake metering against invoices.
Non-revenue water in Tanzania — common questions
What is Tanzania's non-revenue water level?
EWURA's FY2024/25 review puts sector NRW at 42.3%, with 75% attributed to apparent losses — metering error, unauthorised use and billing gaps. Behind the average, individual zones vary enormously, which is exactly why zone metering is the first move.
We're a small district WSSA. Is DMA monitoring overkill?
No — it shrinks to fit. Two or three zones, an inlet meter each, one dashboard: that's a complete first deployment for a district scheme, and it typically finds its first significant leak or unbilled draw within weeks. The architecture is the same one metro utilities use; only the count changes.
How does this interact with our prepaid metering?
Prepaid fixes collection, not leakage. Comparing zone inlet volumes against total prepaid vends splits your losses cleanly: the vend-to-inlet gap is physical loss and bypass, while collection issues have already been squeezed out by prepayment. Utilities running both datasets finally see which problem they actually have.
Can the records feed EWURA reporting directly?
Yes — zone inputs, balances and pressure histories export as clean tables, so performance-review submissions and improvement-plan evidence trace to continuous measurement rather than year-end estimation. The same exports serve boards and financiers.
What does a deployment cost?
It scales with zones: a first deployment on one or two DMAs is quoted as a written cost band after a free remote assessment of your network map and existing metering. Worst-zone-first, recovered water funding the next zone, is the sequence that works on WSSA budgets.
Who installs and maintains the equipment?
Your technicians or local partners, with our engineers guiding remotely — hardware arrives pre-configured from Johannesburg. Solar power, multi-year batteries and remote diagnostics mean a healthy site needs no routine visits.
The regulator’s own numbers: EWURA’s FY2024/25 review shows NRW jumping to 42.3% with three-quarters of the loss commercial. Our close reading of the report sets out why that attribution changes the intervention.
Comparing markets? Non-revenue water in Africa compares how the loss is defined, reported and audited across the markets we serve — the definitions differ more than the numbers do. The Tanzania entry sits next to the neighbours it is usually compared with.
Make next year's EWURA number a decision, not a surprise.
Send us your scheme layout and last review figures. We'll propose a first DMA deployment that turns the percentage into a ranked, fixable worklist.