Coca-Cola System / IUCN / Global Water Challenge — Ruvu Basin Watershed Restoration for Dar es Salaam's Water Security (Tanzania)

On 25 March 2026, the Coca-Cola system — via Coca-Cola Beverages Africa and The Coca-Cola Foundation — announced a USD 1.94 million investment to restore degraded catchment land in the Ngerengere sub-catchment of the Ruvu Basin, the primary water source for Dar es Salaam (population approximately 9 million). The programme is led by the NGO consortium Global Water Challenge and implemented by IUCN in partnership with Tanzania's statutory Wami-Ruvu Basin Water Board.

Planned activities include tree planting, support for climate-resilient agricultural practices among at least 2,000 farmers, and strengthening the Water Board's catchment-management capacity. The Tanzania project sits within a wider Coca-Cola Africa water-stewardship pledge of nearly USD 25 million across 20 African countries through 2030.

This programme follows an earlier, smaller CARE Tanzania-brokered payments-for-watershed-services pilot in the nearby Uluguru Mountains, in which Coca-Cola Kwanza Limited (dependent on roughly 1,500 m³/day of water via the utility DAWASCO) paid, through CARE, village authorities in Kibungo, Nyingwa, Lanzi and Dimilo to implement soil-conservation measures — an earlier, smaller-scale precedent for corporate watershed payments in the country.

As of this entry, the 2026 Ruvu Basin programme has only just launched: none of the announcement sources quantify hectares restored, tree survival, or measured water-yield or sediment outcomes, and there is no independent audit comparable to Alliance for Water Stewardship certification. It is included here as a documented example of the corporate-watershed-PES model being extended, with credible institutional partners, into a country not yet represented in this theme — not as a record of proven results, a distinction reflected directly in the evidence scores below.

Read the full analysis: https://www.coca-cola.com/xe/en/media-center/Coca-Cola-system-aims-to-strengthen-water-security-in-Tanzania