Water Vision 2000 declared: “Water crises are not about too little water... but about managing water badly such that billions of people and the environment suffer badly.” Good leadership and governance are therefore needed to bring about investments through innovation in the water sector. However, the ubiquitous nature of investments in water services makes it less attractive for the private finance sector. Agricultural groundwater development has particularly begun offering incentives for private investors. This study foresees a high potential in the integration of recent developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) with existing hydraulic technologies to sustain cropping and food production in African drylands. A case is given for the blending of the Bhungroo, Grundfos Lifelink and M-Pesa technologies to make an integrated BGM-P technology for agricultural groundwater supply. This will enable water users have access to the service at the “right” time, in the “right” quantities, at the “right” places. This is a pathway to sustainable agriculture intensification.

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At the basin level, watershed resources (water, land, and ecosystem services) are often managed in “silos,” whereby gender-sensitive data and analytics are employed by different stakeholders without regard to existence of similar systems in other parts of the same sub-catchment. These cases create missed opportunities and insights for harnessing better innovative water interventions from baseline scenarios by examining the relevant frameworks, protocols, and tools for data sharing as well as the means of disaggregating water and climate change data into gender-sensitive formats transferable to similar sub-catchments. Innovative water solutions would enable optimal water services provision and financing without farmers depending wholly on external organizations to provide solutions to their financial challenges through taking part in technological development of viable water infrastructure.