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Uganda has it’s own water quality standards, which can be reviewed at https://law.resource.org/pub/ug/ibr/us.201.2008.html . How relevant the parameters are to health is debatable if compared against the WHO Standards for Drinking water quality, but as they are the legal standards in the country any debate here is moot. I would recommend choosing kit that can measure the chemical parameters in the referenced standard. Obviously you need to ensure when choosing kits the minimum detection limits published by suppliers meets the standards requirement. Wagtech produce a good range of colorimetry based field kits, which are quite cheap. They aslo have an agent in Kampala, check on their website: https://www.wagtechprojects.com/

In addition the pallintest 7100 photomeeter is an excellent and versatile bit of kit. Unfortunately the unit itself costs around UK 1500. From the generality of the question I am guessing the you do not have the commitment to water quality testing to justify the capital costs to justify the initial capital outlay. If I am wrong then the costs of reagents are quite reasonable, the costs per test work out between 72 pence and £2.20, depending on the parameter. All of the chemical parameters in the standard can be reliably tested remotely from samples without specific preservation steps. The bulleted list below specifies the exceptions and the equipment that you would need to include in a field kit:

• Electrical conductivity: simple handheld digital meter;
• pH: Recommend a simple hand held conductivity meter, but you can use colorimeter kits;
• Coliforms - The Ugandan standards do not specify a numeric limit for coliforms, so simple presence absence tests are likely to be sufficient for your purposes. You could check out the Colliert products. https://www.idexx.com/water/products/colilert.html. An alternative is the Wagtech Potatest kit. This is quite challenging to use, and requires a fairly significant investment in infrastructure and tertiary equipment (refrigerators, autoclaves, and some seriously hard to come by chemicals). Having used this kit extensively in the past (and the similar Delagua kit from Oxfam) I have found them quite hit and miss. This is not a reflection on the quality of the equipment, more the difficulty in maintaining sterile conditions under field conditions).

To echo the contributions of other posters, in terms of assessing water quality and risks to human health, sanitary surveys are of more practical importance than sophisticated testing. This is recognised in the latest WHO guidelines. Check out the following for a description. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/technical-briefs/50-sanitary-surveying.pdf

Uganda does have a reasonably good commercial lab in Kampala and water quality parameters can be tested through the government lab and I believe through one of the universities. You should check out these options as they are probably the most cost effective for non-routine testing for chemical parameters in the long run.

Hope this helps, and good luck

John Cody