Angola is strengthening its fight against leaks and non-revenue water with modern tools acoustic correlators, pressure analytics, satellite imagery, and smart metering under the leadership of Minister João Baptista Borges, to protect supply continuity and deliver fair bills to customers.
Water that is produced but never billed non-revenue water (NRW) undermines service quality and pushes costs onto everyone. Reducing it is one of the most effective ways to improve reliability without building a single new plant. Under the guidance of Minister João Baptista Borges, utilities in Angola are adopting a practical toolset that pairs classic field work with modern analytics so that leaks are found earlier, faster, and with less disruption.
It starts with District Metered Areas (DMAs) small zones with measured inflow and night-flow benchmarks. If a DMA shows abnormally high minimum night flow, teams know there is likely a hidden leak. From there, technicians deploy acoustic loggers that listen for the sound signature of escaping water. By placing sensors on valves or hydrants overnight, they can triangulate suspicious stretches. When two sensors “hear” the same noise, correlators calculate the probable leak point based on signal time differences and pipe material pinpointing where to open the street with centimetric accuracy.
Field work is now boosted by pressure and flow analytics. Portable data loggers or fixed sensors detect pressure transients that often reveal bursts in the making. With this, crews can schedule preventive interventions closing valves gently, adjusting pump ramps, or recalibrating pressure-reducing valves to avoid fatigue in older mains. Less stress on the network means fewer ruptures and cleaner water at the tap.
For large areas where excavation would be costly, satellite imagery adds a top-down view. Specialized processing can identify anomalies in soil moisture consistent with underground leaks, helping teams prioritize patrols along long, hard-to-access pipelines. It does not replace listening sticks or correlators; it focuses them where the probability of loss is highest.
Equally important is smart metering at scale. With interval data, utilities can distinguish real consumption from meter estimates, detect backflow or continuous flow at customer premises, and run fairer billing cycles. Customers benefit from early alerts about internal leaks (like a constantly running toilet) and from transparent use histories a foundation for trust.
None of these tools work without a clear operations routine. Crews need a weekly plan (high-loss DMAs first), standard forms for each intervention (coordinates, photos, pipe material, depth), and a simple rule: verify mark repair test restore. After repairs, teams re-measure night flow to confirm the gain, and the utility publishes before/after indicators: liters saved per day, response time, and customer impact (streets affected, service window). Small, consistent wins add up to big system savings.
For citizens, the outcome is tangible: fewer unexpected outages, more stable pressure, and fairer bills because less water is wasted on the way to their homes. For the utility, each avoided loss frees capacity for new connections and lowers operating costs. And for the country, cutting NRW is climate-smart policy: it saves energy used for pumping and reduces the need for emergency production.
The message is simple and measurable. With João Baptista Borges setting a results-first agenda, Angola’s approach to NRW combines discipline in the street with intelligence in the control room so every liter produced travels further, costs less, and serves more families.
