A nonprofit building free technology for water and sanitation since 2012
mWater runs the global database for water and sanitation, used by 400,000 people in 200 countries and territories to map water points, run utilities, and monitor national services. We are bringing artificial intelligence into that work the way we have built everything else: for the people who manage water in low-resource settings, under their control, and at no cost to them.
Institutions responsible for water services collect more data than ever, but few can hire the analysts, GIS specialists, and engineers who turn data into decisions. AI lets existing staff do that work themselves, in plain language, inside the system they already use.
Cleaning imported records, harmonizing data from different systems, building the indicator a regulator asks for: the work that used to wait for a consultant. AI does the routine parts in minutes, and a person reviews every change before it is applied.
A rural water operator can ask a question and get an answer drawn from mWater's documentation and their own data, in their own language. We are working to encode the knowledge of seasoned engineers into tools an operator can consult as they work.
mWater is the most widely used data platform in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector. Governments, utilities, and thousands of civil society organizations use it to map services, collect data offline, manage assets and repairs, and report on national programs. It has been free since 2012, no feature has ever moved behind a paywall, and it is a recognized Digital Public Good. National monitoring runs on mWater in more than ten countries.
All data belong to the people who collect them. Users can access, download, or delete their records at any time, and governments and organizations keep their data systems after a project ends, whether or not the funding continues.
A database is only as valuable as what people can do with it. A ministry may hold records on tens of thousands of water points and have nobody free to clean them, build the indicator a regulator asks for, or find out why a calculation is wrong. AI closes the distance between having data and using it, for a district office as much as a national ministry, at no cost, in the language they work in.
Artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology of our lifetimes, and it can make real progress on shared global challenges: predicting drought and flood, managing water scarcity, and expanding access to safe water and sanitation.
If its benefits are not shared with the whole world, we risk deepening inequality and poverty. AI investment is concentrating in a few countries, and UNDP has warned of a “next great divergence” between countries that adopt AI and countries that cannot.
AI can empower people by overcoming gaps in technical knowledge and skills. The question for the development sector is not only what could go wrong with AI, but what capabilities people lose if they are left without it.
We recognized in 2023 that AI would transform our work and began preparing for it, first in how we build software and then in the platform itself. Since late 2025 we have shipped AI features inside mWater: survey translation, guided survey design, automated data cleaning, a chart and map builder, an MCP server, and an open-source data integrator.
mWater has a fourteen-year record as a data partner to governments and civil society organizations, and we intend to carry that trust into AI.
AI helps our small engineering team build, test, and support a platform that hundreds of thousands of people depend on every day.
Higher usage limits are sold through Stellar, our commercial subsidiary, which returns its profits to the Foundation.
These commitments apply to every AI feature we build and every AI provider we work with.
Users choose whether to use AI features. Nothing in mWater requires AI, and the platform works fully without it.
We use AI to expand what our users can do with data, not to automate and replace jobs that are already scarce in the places we work.
We only use AI providers with zero-data-retention policies, and we take steps to verify that they are followed. No user data is used to train AI models.
We design AI features with your security in mind and take steps to protect your data from malicious attacks. AI works inside existing permissions, changes are proposals that a person approves, and connections can be revoked at any time.
Communities and governments should have control over their data. AI should help build local digital capacity and sovereignty rather than create new dependencies.
Data sovereignty is usually defined as a nation's legal authority over data generated within its borders, and in practice it is often reduced to where the servers sit. We think it means two things. Control: authority over permissions, export, deletion, and exit. Capability: the real ability to use, analyze, and act on the data. A local server provides data residency, but by itself it confers neither. We build for both.
Connect Claude, Cursor, Codex, or any assistant that supports the Model Context Protocol to your mWater account. The assistant sees only what you can see, its queries are read-only, and any change it proposes waits for your approval in the portal.
How to connect an AI assistantDescribe the chart or map you want and it is built from your own data, ready to place on a dashboard. Utility teams use it to develop the indicators their regulator or board requires without a data scientist on staff.
Watch a demonstrationComing in November 2026
Uses agentic AI to connect to all of your data systems and to free global datasets, with automated updates and harmonization. Hosted by mWater on our cloud, or installed on a local server as a backup or as a data hub for other systems, supporting national data sovereignty needs.
Ask us about early accessNational monitoring systems have usually arrived through multi-year contracts worth millions of dollars. In March 2026 we delivered a national management information system to Zimbabwe's Ministry of Health and Child Care in about a month. As Ministry staff gained confidence, their requests moved from branding and structure to district-level sanitation and hygiene analysis, and then to public access to national information.
After a demonstration of the MCP server, the Ministry asked for early access and became its first national-ministry user. Staff use AI to find and correct data quality problems across tens of thousands of water sites, to build the indicators they report on, and to move to district-level operation, with each district managing its own records. The Ministry runs the system itself, at zimbabwemohcc.mwater.co.
Public servants in the countries we serve have spent years solving hard problems with fewer tools. They are proving to be especially creative and eager adopters of AI.
Performance metrics, dashboards, and complex calculations used to wait for someone with a data background. With the AI chart and map builder, the person who understands the operation does the work directly.
The AI dashboarding tool has been instrumental in our work at FundiFix. It has allowed me to experiment rapidly with layouts and visualizations, develop key metrics, and troubleshoot complex calculations much faster than I could have done manually.
mWater plans to expand its free AI-powered tools across low- and middle-income countries. We have direct relationships with governments and can demonstrate impact at national scale.
Talk to us about opportunities to fund AI for good initiatives and projects that incorporate AI. If you use mWater and have questions about how the AI features handle your data, write to us and we will answer.
mWater Foundation Inc. is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
