Guided by the memory of his father’s IT career, Christopher Ochieng has built a 15-year legacy in the water sector, steering multi-million-shilling projects and introducing AI to dam operations. Now assistant ICT director at Athi Water Works, he is pushing for smart technologies that could transform how Kenya manages one of its most precious resources.
“I think my path to IT was inspired by my dad,” says Christopher Ochieng. Once set on an accounting career, he followed his passion into ICT and now serves as assistant IT director at Athi Water Works. “I have risen through the ranks until now I am in strategic leadership,” he adds, reflecting on a journey shaped by patience, big projects and the drive to bring technology into the heart of water management.
It was not a straightforward ascent. When his father passed away while he was still at school, his mother steered him towards accounting, believing it offered stability. Christopher dutifully completed the courses and even worked for three years as an accountant at Nairobi County Government. Yet the lure of technology never left him.
His break came when he joined the county’s water department as a computer operator in the leak detection unit, monitoring the automated distribution systems for Nairobi. It was 2005 when he joined Athi Water Works Development Agency, formerly Athi Water Services Board, and the agency was building its ICT capability from the ground up. “We were only two of us, the head of ICT and I,” he recalls, a situation that demanded adaptability and grit.
Fifteen years later, his fingerprints are on some of the water sector’s most ambitious projects. He has overseen multi-million-shilling system upgrades, built disaster recovery capabilities, and introduced AI-driven sensors to monitor water production, quality and distribution in real time. These innovations have reduced staffing in treatment plants from approximately 40 people in a conventional water treatment plant to just four operators per shift, a transformation he describes with quiet pride.
Yet the challenges remain formidable: cyber security threats, slow adoption of new systems, and the ongoing struggle to modernise water metering in a country where illegal connections persist. “It’s a big challenge, especially keeping up with cyber security and the needs of the organisation to cope with it given that even the budget is not adequate enough to be up to date with the current trends,” he says.
Foresight gained from early failures
The road to his vision has not been without setbacks. In 2007, an asset management system he championed never got off the ground despite having full funding and resources. “It died a natural death,” he says, pointing to poor adoption and weak change management as the culprits. The experience left him convinced that top-level backing is critical. “The tech-savvy CEOs are the ones who have supported our initiatives,” he notes.
In 2023, the lesson was of a different kind when a cyberattack shut down systems for a week. “Once beaten, you need to be agile in terms of protecting the institution… we had like one-week downtime because we had to start afresh,” he recalls. Though his team had backups, the process of redeploying and restoring systems reinforced the need for agility, preparedness and constant investment in security.
Looking ahead, Christopher is determined to modernise water management through smart technologies. The most ambitious step is the phased introduction of IoT-based smart meters, starting with reservoirs and master meters, before moving to individual consumers. Backed by funding from development partners, the plan aims to track water from production to distribution, pinpointing losses and curbing illegal connections. “If you have sensors from the reservoir that monitor the amount of water that gets out and reaches a certain point, you can tell when something is not adding up,” he explains.
He leads a compact ICT team of four, each trained to handle multiple roles so they can step in for one another seamlessly. It is a style rooted in adaptability, trust and technical breadth.
“We are all-rounded in terms of database management, support, security and development,” he says. His approach blends the foresight gained from early failures with a readiness to adopt new systems, ensuring the department stays functional even under pressure.
Beyond the screens and systems, Christopher finds balance in family life and spiritual activities. Evenings and weekends often see him enrolled in online courses, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence – a subject he is both applying at work and exploring for the future. Once an avid club-goer, he now prefers the quiet satisfaction of home, a change he embraces with humour. “I hope I’m not weird,” he says with a laugh, “but I think God created us to be unique.”
