There is a Kenya that is opening motorways, attracting billion-dollar investments, and dreaming of becoming Africa’s hub for artificial intelligence and digital finance.
And then there is another Kenya where, in 2026, a woman who has just become a mother or a relative caring for a hospital patient has to leave the hospital with a jerrycan in hand, walk to a river and return with the water needed to wash the floor, clean clothes or simply ensure a minimum level of hygiene for patients.
This is happening at the Longisa County Referral Hospital, the main healthcare facility in Bomet County, in western Kenya, where the taps have been dry for over two weeks.
The cause is neither an exceptional drought nor a fault in the water supply system, but a matter as trivial as it is disturbing: the county administration’s failure to pay the electricity bill has brought the water pumping system to a standstill.
The consequences are particularly severe in the most sensitive wards, such as the maternity ward, the kitchen and the laundry.
According to accounts gathered by the local press, many patients have been unable to shower for days, whilst their families are forced to reuse sheets and bed linen because there is not enough water to wash them.
Images of women carrying buckets and jerrycans filled from nearby watercourses speak louder than any statistic about the contradictions of a country that is growing rapidly, yet where essential services all too often continue to depend on the goodwill of its citizens.
For those who have been following the situation in Kenya for some time, however, the story has the bitter taste of déjà vu.
This is not, in fact, the first time that Longisa Hospital has found itself in the news due to a water crisis. As early as 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the hospital had to deal with a similar situation, with serious repercussions for patient care and hygiene standards.
Five years on, little seems to have changed.
It is one of the many facets of Kenya’s two-speed reality.
On the one hand, there is Nairobi, hosting international summits, tech start-ups and investments worth billions of dollars; on the other, public hospitals that are unable to guarantee one of the most basic services: running water.
Yet it is water, even more so than sophisticated equipment, that represents the first line of defence for health in a hospital. Without water, instruments cannot be washed, wards cannot be cleaned, the hygiene of women in labour and newborns cannot be guaranteed, and infections cannot be prevented.
Thus, once again, the burden of administrative inefficiencies falls on the shoulders of citizens, especially women. It is they, as has always been the case in so many African communities, who step in as nurses, cleaners and water carriers, so that a hospital can continue, at least in part, to fulfil its mission.
It is a scene that evokes a distant Africa, but one which, sadly, is still very much a part of the present. And it serves as a reminder that development is not measured solely by skyscrapers, motorways or foreign investment, but also by the ability to guarantee every patient a clean bed… and a tap from which water flows.