The European Union (EU) and partners implementing the Strengthening Civil Society Engagement for a Just and Sustainable Urbanization (SCEJU) project have called on national and county governments to formally recognise informal water and waste workers and involve them in policymaking.
Speaking during the opening of the two-day Kenya Sustainable Water and Waste Management Policy Forum 2026 in Nairobi, the partners said informal workers should be integrated into service delivery and given a voice in decisions affecting the sector.
Thomas Yatich of the EU Delegation to Kenya said informal workers play a critical role in addressing water and waste management challenges and should be treated as partners rather than a problem.
“Informal actors are not a problem to be managed. They are partners in the solution,” Yatich said.
The forum brings together national and county governments, development partners, private sector representatives, academia, civil society organisations and informal workers to translate grassroots evidence into policy commitments.
The EU and the SCEJU consortium urged governments to provide affordable licensing, include informal workers in county plans and budgets, and involve them in monitoring Kenya’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which outlines the country’s climate action commitments.
They also called for stronger public-private partnerships to support locally led enterprises in sustainable water and waste management.
Over the past two years, SCEJU has organised 9,139 informal water and waste actors and equipped 268 trainers. The project has trained 2,967 informal workers, with women accounting for 55 to 60 per cent of trained informal waste actors, representing a 21-percentage-point increase from the baseline.
Implemented by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Kenya, the Civil Society Urban Development Platform and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, the EU-co-funded project operates in Kisumu, Nakuru and Makueni counties.
It has supported four target municipalities—Kisumu, Nakuru, Wote and Emali—to implement local climate action strategies and financed six community enterprises.
The forum is expected to produce policy recommendations, establish a partnership framework for informal enterprises and launch the Informal Actors Climate Action Hub to track Kenya’s climate commitments on water and waste management.