In Ghana, only 54% of households in the poorest quintile have access to basic water services, compared to 94% of households in the richest quintile, according to estimates from the World Health Organization and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP). With funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Aquaya Institute is studying the best ways to provide pro-poor water subsidies in Ghana's rural communities. This work entails (i) figuring out scalable methods for determining which households and/or communities that are actually impoverished qualify for subsidies, and (ii) estimating the costs associated with putting targeted subsidies into place.

To support these goals, Aquaya used Atlas AI datasets on human and economic activity in Ghana to find and target the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach households and understand who would be the recipients of pro-poor water programming.