R3.0 million of equity for 20% and a R5.0 million expansion facility to roll out fully managed borehole water for businesses, estates and institutions, starting in Johannesburg.
Businesses in Johannesburg pay some of the highest water prices in the country for a supply that is less and less reliable.
of the water Johannesburg buys is lost or never billed (47.3% in DWS’s 2025 No Drop assessment; 47.1% in 2025/26, unaudited).
recorded between June 2025 and June 2026: about 140 a day.
of Johannesburg households had water outages of two days or more in 2025. Cape Town: 8%.
infrastructure backlog. Only 17 km of the 12,364 km network was replaced in 2023/24.
About 28 hours of average consumption in reservoirs (2022), against a 48-hour benchmark.
On 30 June 2026 the City swept R3.4bn out of Johannesburg Water, leaving R1.8bn of creditors unpaid.
Sources: DWS (June 2026); NW4784; GroundUp; Stats SA GHS 2025; Parliament; Daily Maverick; Johannesburg Water Business Plan 2026/27.
Sources: Daily Maverick; EWN; BusinessTech; GroundUp; Sunday Times (January–October 2026).
Source: Stats SA General Household Survey 2025, via GroundUp and The Outlier.
of Rand Water’s ~5,000 Ml/day goes to Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. Johannesburg draws about 1,720 Ml/day, 190 Ml/day above its bulk allocation (Feb 2026).
Lesotho Highlands Phase II tunnel commissioning target, about nine years late; cost now R53bn. DWS told Parliament it will not remove the need to cut Gauteng’s demand.
national non-revenue water (DWS 2025 assessment), up from 37% in 2014. 47% of 848 wastewater systems are critical (Green Drop 2025); the Minister puts the repair bill at R400bn.
Sources: Engineering News; Polity; SAnews; NW852 (14 April 2026); DWS (June 2026); Daily Maverick; BusinessTech.
Commercial water above 200 kL a month plus sanitation, excl. VAT. Hover a bar for the split.
Sources: City of Johannesburg approved tariff schedules 2017/18 to 2026/27.
9.3% a year compound. In 2026/27 business water rose 8% and sanitation 11%.
Stats SA water prices, July 2017 to July 2022, against 3.9% CPI (K Walsh, SARB economic note, 2023).
Rand Water’s 2026/27 bulk increase, after about 15% in 2025/26 (CoJ budget; Business Day, 27 May 2026).
dam storage in mid-October 2026; 75.8% in September, against 92% a year earlier.
rebound in daily demand since the 2017 Level 5 restrictions: about 570 to 850 Ml/day.
the earliest the City’s New Water Programme will be fully operating; desalination pushed back about five years.
| Per kL, 2026/27, excl. VAT | Johannesburg | Cape Town |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial water | R73.72–R77.77 | R39.56 |
| Commercial sanitation | R58.66 (on 100%) | R29.57 (on 95%) |
| Combined | R132–R136 | about R68 |
Business water in Cape Town costs about half what it does in Johannesburg, so Cape Town is a later, scarcity-led market. Households there pay R95.63/kL above 35 kL a month (2026/27, excl. VAT); a SARB economic note found Cape Town’s 20 kL price rose 18.9% a year above inflation, 2016–2021, the steepest of the metros. Registered boreholes and wellpoints rose from about 1,500 (2016) to about 26,000 (2019) through the drought.
Sources: EWN; GroundUp; City of Cape Town and CoJ 2026/27 tariffs; K Walsh (SARB, 2023); Sunday Times (2019).
Sources: Business Day; Gauteng Health; EWN; Daily Maverick; UJ (2024); Business Report; GroundUp; TimesLIVE.
We replace the municipality as a site’s primary water supply. The customer pays half of what our water saves them, with no capital outlay.
WaterGrid funds, drills, purifies, monitors and maintains a private borehole supply on the customer’s property and keeps the municipal connection as backup. The customer pays one monthly fee for the life of the contract.
Monthly fee = 50% of the trailing 12-month municipal charges our supply removes: water charges on every kilolitre we supply, and sanitation only on water that never reaches the sewer. Sewer-bound borehole water must be metered and registered for sanitation (by-laws s 72(5)), which the City bills per kL. R10,000 minimum; escalates with the City’s water tariff; five- to ten-year term.
Per month, excl. VAT; fixed levies continue and are excluded. Before counting the cost of outages, tankers and storage the customer no longer needs.
Payback from commissioning for each 1,500 kL a month reference profile, at the model’s current assumptions.
When the utility failed, private supply scaled on long contracts. We lock in five- to ten-year terms while the need is acute.
rooftop solar, Oct 2022 to Oct 2025 (Eskom estimate).
private generation registered with NERSA since 2018, about R361bn.
of the utility tariff: typical C&I solar PPA pricing, 15–20 year terms.
| Electricity, 2019–2025 | Water, from 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Failing utility | Load-shedding on 205 days (2022) and 332 (2023) | Outages of 2+ days: 40% of Joburg households (2025) |
| Rising tariff | Electricity tariffs +190% since 2014 (CSIR) | Joburg business water +9.3% a year since 2017/18 |
| No-capex model | PPA at a discount to the grid | Fee at half of the charges displaced |
| Capital | Banks and DFIs finance contracted PPAs | Facility secured on contracted, licensed sites |
Sources: Engineering News (Nov 2025); Energize (2026); GreenCape (2023); TechCentral; BusinessTech; ECR; CoJ tariffs.
[Number] test sites installed and operating in [areas] prove yield, treatment and telemetry. [Results: kL supplied, uptime, customer savings]
watergrid.africa is live with a savings calculator and a free-assessment request flow.
Prospect lists built across managing agents, property managers, student accommodation and commercial owners. [Pipeline value]
A parametric dry-hole cover, triggered by an independent yield test, is being explored with a cell-captive insurer.
Contract architecture set: take-or-pay fee, tariff-linked escalation, buy-out on early exit.
JoZi Capital backs the business and brings its legal, finance and industrial network to origination.
per kL displaced. Water that never reaches the sewer (irrigation, evaporative cooling) removes water and sanitation charges. Sewer-bound water removes only the water charge.
Good granite water needs filtration, ultrafiltration and UV. Saline or polluted water needs reverse osmosis, which roughly doubles treatment cost; RO sites are priced separately.
from one well-sited borehole. Siting, licensing, drilling, controls and telemetry are largely fixed, so small sites take much longer to pay back.
Blue: 15 months or less. Grey: 15–18. Orange: longer. Volume as set in the model; fee escalation and running costs as for the reference site.
| Term | Five years from commissioning; ten targeted. CPA s 14 does not apply between juristic persons (s 14(1)). |
| Fee | 50% of the trailing 12-month municipal charges our supply removes; R10,000 minimum. |
| Escalation | Annually, in step with the City’s approved commercial water tariff increase. |
| Take-or-pay | From commissioning, after the licence and City consent, whatever the volume drawn; municipal backup stays. |
| Ownership | WaterGrid owns pumps, storage, plant and telemetry (WSA s 79); borehole works accede to the land. |
| Early exit | Unamortised capital plus a break fee, or transfer of the system at that price. |
| Service levels | SANS 241 quality for drinking water, availability and response times; fee credits if missed. |
| Security | Debit order; deposit or guarantee for weaker credits; receivables cedable to the lender. |
Commercial terms as proposed by WaterGrid; subject to final contract drafting.
Every number on this page runs on one model. Move a slider, pick a scenario, or set the exit multiple; the unit economics above and the projection, cover ratios and returns below all recompute.
Calendar years from January 2027; excl. VAT; rounded. Tax at 27% with assessed losses (R1m or 80% rule) and SARS IN 47 wear and tear; none on borehole works. No cover ratio while EBITDA is negative.
Strategy 1 uses the equity alone; Strategy 2 adds the facility. Site cash is reinvested; no further equity. Signings are limited by sales capacity and by keeping at least R250,000 of cash through each site’s build.
Illustrative model, not an offer or a forecast of certain outcome. Payback is measured from commissioning. Facility terms are WaterGrid’s proposal, not a lender’s offer; prime 10.75% as at 25 September 2026.
a year for water (R11.89bn) and wastewater (R8.10bn), 2025/26 budget. Business share not published.
Gauteng residents drilled about 10,000 boreholes in a decade (Borehole Water Association estimate).
Global water-as-a-service: about US$58bn in 2024, growing about 10.5% a year (DataM Intelligence estimate).
Exit precedent: Culligan agreed to buy water-as-a-service operator AquaVenture for about US$1.1bn (Dec 2019; completed Mar 2020).
Sources: CoJ 2025/26 MTREF; Reuters (Aug 2026); DataM Intelligence; Goodwin Procter (2019); BusinessWire (2020).
| Player | Model | No-capex offer | Overlap with WaterGrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borehole Africa | Shared savings, fixed-fee lease or capex + SLA | Yes | High: same segments; claims 300+ projects |
| Talbot | Per-kL water, lease-to-own, fixed-fee O&M | Yes (industrial) | Low–medium: mines and industry |
| Nafasi Water | Develop, finance, build and operate | Yes | Low: industrial and municipal reuse |
| WEC Projects | Engineering, procurement and construction | No | Low–medium: sells plants |
| Water Rhapsody | Product installs through dealers | No | Medium: rainwater and greywater |
| Drillers | Drill and equip for a once-off price | No | High: the status quo |
| Landlords’ own capex | Tanks and backup on balance sheet | No | High: e.g. Redefine, Attacq |
50% of the charges displaced, set from 12 months of bills, against an undisclosed savings share.
We carry dry-hole, yield and maintenance risk; a capex buyer carries it all.
Licensing, dolomite screening, sanitation metering and SANS 241 records built in.
Sources: company websites (27 Oct 2026); Talbot (2025); Norfund (2026); Engineering News (2024); TimesLIVE.
Johannesburg’s catchments allow little or no groundwater under the general authorisation, so every reference-size site needs a full water use licence. Tap a step.
| Requirement | Source | How WaterGrid handles it |
|---|
Sources: National Water Act; GenN 538 (2016); GN R267 (2017); CoJ Water Services By-Laws 2023; CoJ borehole process (2025); Water Services Act. Subject to legal review.
Cumulative contracts signed under Strategy 2 at the model’s current assumptions, all priced on CoJ 2026/27 tariffs. No boreholes on dolomite (CoJ by-laws s 72(1)).
Equity carries each site to its licence; the lender funds only licensed, yield-tested sites with signed contracts. Terms are WaterGrid’s proposal and assumptions, not a lender’s offer.
Attorney; founder and director of Decipher Consulting, a legal, finance and restructuring advisory firm.
Commerce degree in auditing and tax; PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Board member of McCormick Engineering through JoZi Capital.
Leads structuring, contracts, regulatory approvals and capital.
Co-founder of JoZi Capital, the investment vehicle backing WaterGrid.
[Background and track record to be inserted]
[Role in WaterGrid to be confirmed]
Investment vehicle focused on industrial, infrastructure, automotive and software businesses across Africa.
[Engineering lead, registered hydrogeologist and water-treatment engineer to be named]
Bracketed items to be completed before circulation.
Water security that pays for itself.
R3.0 million equity for 20% · R5.0 million expansion facility · Johannesburg first
SALJ style; source type in brackets; accessed 27 October 2026.