One in four people on the planet lack safely managed drinking water. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 500 million people have no access to basic clean water.

This isn't just a resources problem - it's also a data problem. 

Despite significant investment in WASH programmes globally, decision-making in the sector is often hampered by fragmented monitoring systems, low confidence in data quality, and limited capacity to turn data into action. 

Across the WASH sector, billions of dollars of investment flow into infrastructure that nobody can see in full. Water pumps, boreholes, sanitation facilities are all governed by a patchwork of communities, NGOs, municipalities, and private providers, tracked in incompatible systems, or not tracked at all. This means that national governments and UNICEF offices struggle to consolidate information across providers, subnational levels, and funding streams into coherent systems. When programmes end, the data disappears with them. When a new initiative arrives, it starts from scratch, often duplicating what came before. 

The result is a sector making critical investment decisions - where to build, what to fix, who to reach - with an incomplete picture of what already exists and whether it works. Rural communities, the hardest to reach and the most underserved, fall furthest through the gaps. Nearly half of all rural populations are served by infrastructure that exists outside any monitoring system entirely.

Without harmonised, nationally owned data systems, WASH programmes risk operating blind - investing resources without the information needed to reach those most in need.