Naledi Local Municipality faced an energy crisis. The municipality, which encompasses Vryburg and Huhudi in South Africa’s North West province, was losing 26% of its electricity sales – far above the national norm of 5%. ‘The municipality was bleeding in terms of electricity sales,’ says the mayor, Clifton Groep.

That shifted when the municipality – partnering with Vodacom, Ontec and IoT specialist Macrocomm – introduced a smart metering initiative, deploying more than 6 000 smart meters to prevent meter tampering and bypassing. The impact was immediate, reducing the financial strain on the municipality caused by electricity theft and enabling it to continue paying its Eskom account.

‘Meters are so advanced, they help us to detect before anyone tampers with the meter. The meter will notify us so that we can block and minimise any losses,’ says Groep. ‘This technology has changed our lives as a municipality for the better. It helps us with accurate billing.’

Eskom is now rolling out its own smart metering project, aiming to install 6.2 million meters across South Africa by 2027. Eskom senior executive Collin Reddy says this is part of Eskom’s digital transformation, aimed at modernising the utility’s network and reducing non-technical losses. In 2025, illegal connections and electricity theft accounted for 14.7 TWh in losses, more than ZAR30 billion in revenue.

Smart electricity metering enables real-time monitoring and automated control of energy use, allowing households (such as those in Naledi Local Municipality) and utilities (such as Eskom) to manage consumption more efficiently and transparently. For businesses, benefits include increased efficiency and accurate billing.

‘There are a few things in life that get the blood boiling, and inaccurate billing is right up there with its fellow perpetrators,’ says Anoop Hariparsad, digital energy business unit leader at Schneider Electric. ‘And it’s downright bad for business, with building owners and tenants drawing the proverbial short end of the stick.’

Accurate billing relies on accurate measuring, says Hariparsad. ‘Unfortunately, traditional meters, which require manual readings, are by their very nature inaccurate and quite frankly, archaic. Today’s buildings require modern metering solutions that provide property managers with access to accurate and verifiable data, the foundation for improved billing and, importantly, better decision-making,’ he says.

Inscape Property Management would agree. As the owner of a small, two-tenant shopping complex, Inscape faced tenant disputes over electricity bills. Tenants’ and common-area meters were manually metered, with the difference between start and end submeter readings calculated… but the numbers didn’t add up.

Inscape asked Republic Metering to install smart submeters for the tenants, plus a municipal-check smart meter, to enable full daily consumption auditing and anomaly detection at the tenant and complex levels. The installation cost ZAR100 000. Inscape claims to have seen a ZAR900 000 return on its investment. ‘The installation of smart metering has allowed us to recover outstanding funds and has more than paid for itself in the immediate term,’ said the company. ‘As an additional benefit, we will now have a global view of the energy usage at the site, along with detailed historical data on demand and usage. This will prove invaluable to our customers and us for energy planning and making informed decisions on energy efficiency and least cost supply options.’

But power is not the only metered utility, and electricity is not the only precious resource. ‘Energy management in commercial properties goes beyond electricity,’ says Hariparsad. ‘Water usage, often manually read and billed, presents similar challenges around accuracy, cost, and effort. It becomes a truly frustrating experience when buildings receive persistent, inaccurate data. Again, integrated software platforms allow both electricity and water meters to be monitored within a single system, creating a consolidated view of resource consumption across a property.’ He adds that a unified approach like this can reduce operational overheads and provide a more complete picture of a commercial building’s environmental footprint.

Smart water meters digitally measure water consumption for households or buildings in near-real time. Measurements are automatically transmitted to municipalities, integrating with billing and monitoring systems.

A growing body of case studies highlights the commercial benefits of smart water metering. In Ireland, the 4-star, 116-room Midlands Park Hotel in County Laois cut its daily water usage from 75 000 litres to just 15 000 after a smart metering system detected a major water leak in the hotel swimming pool. ‘We believed the hotel had no water issues and the water bill was correct,’ said hotel manager George Leahy – and who could blame him? Physical checks of the hotel building had indicated no visible issues.

In South Africa, water leaks are a national crisis. The Department of Water and Sanitation reported a national average non-revenue water rate of 46.43% in 2023 (the most recent year for which data is available). ‘What this means is that almost half of the treated, usable water produced by local municipalities is lost before it can be billed for,’ says Tumi Chamayou, chief enterprise business officer at MTN Business South Africa.

Chamayou notes that most South African households rely on manual readings, which are prone to misreadings, logistical challenges and information oversights. ‘In contrast, smart metering provides for a continuous, accurate flow of data that is in turn used to inform accurate billing, more efficient revenue collection and the early detection of issues such as leakages or damaged infrastructure,’ she says.

In 2024, MTN Business was awarded a three-year contract to supply, install, manage and maintain smart electricity and water metering solutions across 257 South African municipalities. ‘Improved water efficiency is not only about enabling better service delivery at the level of households,’ says Chamayou. ‘It also contributes to broader development outcomes by supporting reliable municipal services, strengthening local economies, and ensuring more equitable access to essential resources in line with the National Development Plan 2030.’

Across South Africa’s northern border lies landlocked Botswana, one of the driest countries on Earth, with average annual rainfall of barely 400 mm. There, the national government is responding to water shortages in much the same way as South Africa has responded to its own energy crisis: by deploying thousands of smart meters.

In 2025, Botswana’s Water Utilities Corporation installed more than 33 000 smart prepaid meters across Gaborone and nearby areas, aiming to reduce its 48% treated-water losses and improve leak detection through real-time IoT alerts.

From Vryburg to Gaborone and beyond, one truth has become undeniable: when you can measure it, you can manage it. That’s a game changer in a region where every litre and every kilowatt counts.

By Mark van Dijk
Images: Gallo/Getty Images