Prepaid Water Metering, Token by Token
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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Windhoek's 'smart' meters aren't wireless — residents type a 20-digit code into a battery box. The city bought 300 of them in 2022, building on prepaid metering it pioneered in informal settlements back in 1998.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ Windhoek city profile · 💧 Water guide · 📡 Data & IoT projects
Windhoek pioneered prepaid water metering in informal settlements as early as 1998, running over 1,000 communal standpipes. A September 2021 pilot extended it to individual households: residents load a 20-digit code, bought at a vendor, into a battery-powered in-home unit — there is no wireless telemetry or dashboard. The city bought about 300 meters for the first residential phase in 2022, prioritising pensioners and struggling payers.
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1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Prepaid Water Metering, Token by Token” — Windhoek, Namibia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/windhoek-smart-metering/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.