AAWSA turned branch staff into revenue reformers within six months

Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority faced the everyday utility grind: reducing losses, improving billing and making collections more reliable. A full structural overhaul would have been slow and politically heavy.

The FLL approach gave branches a smaller laboratory. According to AAWSA's general manager quoted by the World Bank, within six months one branch cut non-revenue water from 39% to 34%, while another branch increased billing by 30%.

The same quote reports revenue increases of 23% in one branch and 47% in another. AAWSA then created an FLL training center to train Ethiopian water utilities and share the method with other African organizations.

Use staff-led branch experiments

The branch scale made progress measurable quickly without waiting for a utility-wide redesign.

Billing, collections and loss reduction were linked, so staff could see the financial effect of routine changes.

AAWSA institutionalized the method by becoming a trainer, not just a one-time beneficiary.

A large utility can de-risk reform by letting branches prove the new behavior in numbers before headquarters mandates it everywhere.

AAWSA became part of the FLL Delivery Network alongside CEC in Chennai and GWP-Med. That converted a local operating improvement into a peer-to-peer export model for other utilities.