ABSTRACT

Urban water demand is usually determined by the amount of water required by residential, industrial, commercial, and public use, as well as losses on a daily, monthly or yearly basis (Pillay, 2005). It is highly elastic and responsive to many of the factors including, population and commercial/industrial growth trends, weather phenomena, price changes and technological influences. Most studies (Nilsson and Hammer, 1996; Mapande and Tawanda, 1998; Gumbo and Van der Zaag, 2001) conducted in Zimbabwe have focussed primarily on water supply and demand problems within larger cities such as Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare, while little has been done on smaller cities. This paper, therefore, examines the trends in water demanded and supplied of Kadoma City from 1992 to 2006. It will look at annual water supply and demand for the population, municipality, institutions

and industries to determine whether water supply was sufficient for the City’s requirements. It was hypothesised that water demanded and supplied to residents, institutions and industry significantly varied over the 15-year period.