LeakNet by YA-ZA-3: Mobilising Citizens. Detecting Leaks. Shifting Behaviour.

By Ameera Yacoob, Bhekinkosi Mkhize, Laurent Etokabeka, Ayanda Ngcobo, and Bankies Katlego

South Africa Is Running Dry: A Crisis of Leaks and Disconnection

Every day, millions of litres of treated water vanish from South Africa’s municipal networks—silently, invisibly, and often without intervention. Nearly 47% of the country’s treated water is lost, with 38% attributed to real losses—physical leakages from ageing pipes, corroded fittings, and poorly maintained infrastructure (WRC, 2025; DWS, 2023). These losses translate into over R7 billion annually in non-revenue water, directly undermining national water security and placing unsustainable strain on already overburdened municipalities. As climate pressures intensify and demand outpaces supply, fixing leaks remains one of the most immediate and cost-effective responses available (WRC, 2025).

Yet the issue is not just infrastructural—it is deeply behavioural. Citizens often lack the tools, trust, and incentives to identify and report water losses, particularly background leaks that go unnoticed for weeks or months (SALGA, 2025). Most South Africans do not see themselves as stakeholders in the solution, and public engagement is typically limited to reactive complaints. The result is a profound disconnect between water users and water systems. Without community-level awareness and action, even the most advanced infrastructure upgrades will fail to meet their full potential. To turn the tide, we must reimagine water stewardship as a shared civic responsibility, starting with the leak in our street.

Why Citizens Aren’t Reporting—and Why That Matters

Despite the staggering scale of water loss in South Africa, most citizens remain unaware of or disconnected from reporting mechanisms. The distinction between a burst and a background leak is poorly understood, and limited access to tools or channels further hampers proactive involvement (WRC, 2025). Many residents feel that leak reporting is futile, especially when feedback is delayed or absent. This erosion of trust discourages participation and reinforces a passive, reactive culture around water use.

This disengagement carries a hidden cost. Undetected background leaks, though less dramatic than bursts, contribute more significantly to cumulative water losses (WRC, 2025). When citizens are excluded from early detection efforts, municipalities lose critical real-time insights that could support faster, data-driven responses. A functional reporting ecosystem must empower users, offer timely feedback, and reinforce behaviour change—turning citizens into partners, not bystanders, in South Africa’s water management future (SALGA, 2025).

Our Vision: Turning Bystanders into Water Guardians

LeakNet is more than a mobile app—it is the foundation of a national movement to reframe citizens as stewards of a shared, life-sustaining resource. At its core lies a simple ethos: civic engagement is not optional in the face of crisis. Water governance must become participatory, not transactional. When citizens are equipped with the right tools, they do more than observe—they act, advocate, and hold systems accountable. By shifting responsibility closer to the source of water use, LeakNet encourages everyday decision-makers to shape the systems that serve them.

Through a digitally enabled, community-first model, we aim to build pathways for co-ownership of municipal water systems. From students and schools to households and ward councillors, LeakNet fosters a decentralised network of Water Guardians who contribute actively to detection, data collection, and behaviour change. This model promotes both accountability and transparency, creating a feedback loop where civic action is seen, valued, and rewarded, turning every report into a ripple in a much larger wave of national change.

Introducing LeakNet: AI-Powered, Community-Driven, Scalable

LeakNet is a lightweight, AI-powered solution designed to empower everyday South Africans to detect, report, and track water leaks in real time. Users interact via a mobile app or WhatsApp interface—accessible even in low-bandwidth settings—by uploading images, videos, or audio clips of suspected leaks. AI models then classify and prioritise these inputs, offering an intelligent, low-cost approach to early detection (WRC, 2025). This ensures that action can begin where it matters most: within communities.

But LeakNet is more than a tool—it is a catalyst for change. Gamification encourages participation through the use of points, badges, and community leaderboards. Smart feedback loops reinforce behavioural shifts, rewarding users with updates such as, “Your report saved 80L today.” A municipality-facing dashboard clusters reports by severity and geography, allowing for timely intervention and improved resource allocation (LeakNet Proposal, 2025). Together, these features form a system that is inclusive, data-driven, and scalable from pilot to national deployment.

How It Works: From Leaks to Local Action

LeakNet simplifies citizen participation through an intuitive reporting flow. A community member encounters a suspected leak, captures a photo, video, or audio clip, and submits it via the app or WhatsApp. The AI engine analyses the input to identify the leak type and severity, then logs the report. Verified entries are geotagged and displayed on a municipal dashboard, enabling real-time visibility and spatial prioritisation of repairs. Each submission contributes to a growing dataset that enhances predictive planning and leak prevention over time (WRC, 2025; LeakNet Proposal, 2025).

Once a report is submitted, the system sends the user tailored feedback—such as estimated litres saved—and assigns points toward their Water Guardian profile. Leaderboards track progress across schools, wards, and communities, turning individual action into collective impact. The dashboard, updated continuously, allows municipalities to respond efficiently while promoting transparency and citizen trust. By closing the loop between observation, action, and feedback, LeakNet empowers everyday users to become active custodians of South Africa’s most threatened resource.

Designed for the Real World: Accessible, Inclusive, Impactful

LeakNet is purposefully designed for South African realities, where limited connectivity, youth potential, and municipal capacity converge. The platform integrates a WhatsApp-based interface to ensure participation even in low-bandwidth environments. School-led activations promote early civic engagement, while print-based rewards—such as stickers and badges—help foster visibility and social reinforcement in data-constrained settings. These elements are not theoretical imports but locally grounded interventions built for accessibility and cultural resonance (SALGA, 2025).

At the institutional level, LeakNet offers a real-time dashboard that allows municipal officials to monitor leak trends, prioritise interventions, and respond with greater speed and precision. Reports are clustered by severity and location, ensuring operational efficiency even in resource-limited municipalities. This inclusive design enables LeakNet to scale without excluding the very communities it aims to serve. By aligning digital infrastructure with behavioural insight, the system delivers high-tech impact through low-tech touchpoints (WRC, 2025; LeakNet Proposal, 2025).

Why LeakNet Works: What Sets Us Apart

LeakNet brings together the power of artificial intelligence, citizen science, and behavioural insight into a unified, accessible framework. By blending real-time image and audio recognition with community participation and feedback-driven nudges, the platform addresses both technical inefficiencies and the behavioural inertia that sustains them (WRC, 2025). This integration ensures that leak detection becomes not just smarter, but also more inclusive, context-aware, and socially reinforced (LeakNet Proposal, 2025).

Designed as a lightweight, low-cost solution, LeakNet can be scaled from ward-level pilots to nationwide campaigns without requiring extensive infrastructure upgrades. Its modular architecture, paired with WhatsApp functionality and gamified incentives, makes it ideal for both urban and rural deployment. Most importantly, LeakNet doesn’t just identify problems—it mobilises communities to fix them. In doing so, it builds a bridge between residents and institutions, embedding a culture of shared responsibility in the everyday fabric of water governance (SALGA, 2025).

Our Next Steps: From Pilot to National Platform

Guided by a minimum viable product (MVP) approach, LeakNet will first be piloted in a municipality selected for its diverse geographic and socio-economic contexts. This pilot will test the accuracy of AI, usability of the dashboard, and citizen engagement mechanisms across both the app and WhatsApp interfaces. The focus will be on refining real-time reporting, municipal responsiveness, and feedback loops at a manageable scale before national expansion (LeakNet Proposal, 2025).

In parallel, we aim to cultivate a national narrative around water stewardship. School-based competitions, public media campaigns, and storytelling initiatives will spotlight local Water Guardians and normalise citizen-led leak reporting. A publicly accessible dashboard will further build trust through transparency, while offering aggregated insights for policy planning. LeakNet’s future is not simply digital—it is social, behavioural, and systemic. Its success depends not only on adoption, but on the sustained participation of communities.

The Future We See

We envision a future where water governance is not confined to institutional corridors but embedded in the daily choices of citizens, students, and communities. LeakNet enables a paradigm shift—from reactive infrastructure management to proactive civic stewardship—bridging the gap between data and decision-making, technology and trust. In this future, every report is an act of protection, every citizen a co-author of resilience. Together, we build a South Africa that leaks less, acts faster, and conserves more—because water security, at its core, is a shared national responsibility (WRC, 2025; SALGA, 2025).

References

1. Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), 2023. Annual Report on Non-Revenue Water in South African Municipalities. Pretoria, South Africa.
2. LeakNet Proposal, 2025. LeakNet: A Community AI-Powered Water Guardian Network. NGDA Team YA-ZA-3 Internal Document.
3. South African Local Government Association (SALGA), 2025. Citizen Participation and Service Delivery: Closing the Trust Gap. Johannesburg, South Africa.
4. Water Research Commission (WRC), 2025. NGDA Challenge Brief 3: Citizen Science Supporting Water Loss Management. https://managenrw.co.za/ (accessed June 2025).

Meet the Team