New Sanitation Market Shaping Blog Series! Read the first of 3 blogs ‘Opportunities for market shaping in West and Central Africa’

New Sanitation Market Shaping Blog Series! Read the first of 3 blogs ‘Opportunities for market shaping in West and Central Africa’

This series of three blogs is based on discussions about market shaping held at a regional sanitation industry consultation in Abuja, Nigeria, convened by UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Office.

This first blog outlines how UNICEF and partners are rising to the challenge, recognising the need to expand market-based approaches to sanitation to fulfil the SDG ambition to improve the quality and sustainability of services.

It then reflects on a sanitation market assessment in Ghana, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire which was validated at the industry consultation where a set of opportunities for strengthening sanitation market systems were developed.

Study Explores the Complexities of the Sanitation Marketplace – Globalwaters.org

Study Explores the Complexities of the Sanitation Marketplace. Globalwaters.org, July 24, 2018.

If you thought that sanitation marketing required only the connecting of customers, products, and financing to succeed, then you may wonder why it has proven so challenging to take this intervention to scale. 

It turns out, “Not only is scaling up market-based sanitation hard work, it takes time,” according to Rishi Agarwal, the presenter of the recent webinar on Scaling Market-Based Sanitation that discussed findings from a USAID Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) project desk review. Agarwal is a managing director of FSG and lead author of the study.

The study systematically reviewed available market-based sanitation (MBS) literature and identified only 18 single-country, truly market-based interventions that scaled to at least 10,000 toilets. “A fairly low bar for scale,” says Agarwal; he adds, however, that “five of the interventions studied did reach a scale of 100,000 toilets.”

Despite the challenges, researchers identified common threads they believe other interveners can leverage to help scale market-based sanitation. They presented a framework to better understand how sanitation markets work and to diagnose and problem-solve for the barriers to scale across the sanitation market system.

Read the complete article.

A discussion between WASH funders and grantees

Innovative strategies, new pathways, and more to learn

By iDE

iDE had the opportunity to participate in a conversation amongst various WASH grantees and funders this past fall. From the power of incentives to output based aid, dive into the discussion—the latest innovations in sanitation marketing and questions that still need exploring. Read lessons learned from designing and implementing results-based WASH programs.

 

Understanding the Indian rural sanitation market

How stakeholders should work together to end open defecation.

Toilet block in Odisha, India. Photo: Andrea van der Kerk/IRC

Solving rural sanitation problems in India requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders. These include government, programme implementers, financing institutions, entrepreneurs and households. Understanding the roles, strengths and weaknesses of each stakeholder, how they interact and complement each other, is key to achieving India’s ambitious goal of ending open defecation by 2019.

As a follow-up to the Sanitation Innovation Accelerator, IRC, Ennovent and Ecociate Consultants commissioned a study to gain insights in the sanitation market in Bihar and Odisha, two states with relatively low levels of sanitation coverage: 29% and 43% respectively. The study was conducted over a period of 3 months (from January to March 2017) in two rural districts: one with a high population density and situated in a heavy clay silt agricultural plain (Samastipur district, Bihar) and the other with a low population density situated in a sandy tropical coast (Ganjam district, Odisha).

The Business – A blog on sanitation marketing

The Business: Knowledge and Learning on Sanitation Marketing

• Link 

The Western Pacific Sanitation Marketing and Innovation Program is funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) CS-WASH Fund, implemented by Live & Learn Environmental Education in partnership with The International Water Centre (IWC), and the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA).

Recent posts to The Business include:

• Constructing Portable Toilets in Vanuatu April 26, 2017
• Hygiene training for sanitation enterprises in Vanuatu April 3, 2017
• Vanuatu toilets are the TopWan! March 31, 2017
• Growing Good Citizens March 22, 2017
• Practical Action for World Water Day in Fiji March 22, 2017

USAID Sanitation Working Group Webinar

USAID Sanitation Working Group Webinar

I want to thank our speakers Yi Wei from iDE and Dana Ward from PSI for their informative presentations and active discussion yesterday.  

Below you find a link the recorded version of the webinar.

• Link to the webinar – https://ac.usaid.gov/p9eirm3g45b/
• Yi Wei presentation – Scaling-up rural sanitation
• Dana Ward presentation – Using Lean Start-up in sanitation marketing

Regards,
Jesse Shapiro
WASH Advisor and Sanitation Focal Point
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

iDE Shares Lessons Learned in Building Markets for Sanitation

iDE is proud to announce a new microsite: sanitationmarkets.ideglobal.org. This site outlines the evolution of iDE’s sanitation program in Cambodia, from preliminary market studies to the largest program of its kind in the world.

We made this site because we hope that our experiences will inform the design, implementation, and cost-effectiveness of future sanitation marketing projects.

Here are a few featured posts on the site:

Are We Moving the Needle on Latrine Coverage? Sanitation coverage increased from 29% to 45%in the seven project provinces, a jump of 16% in just over just 2.5 years.

Latrine Sales Exceed “Excellent” Target The project surpassed the topline “excellent” target of latrines sold through project-connected businesses. Update in May 2016: 228,151 latrines have been sold through project-connected business, with average monthly sales at around 5,000.

Reaching the Poor with Sanitation Overall, there has been a doubling (12% increase) in sanitation coverage among the poor since the baseline in early 2012.

Professionalized Sales Drive Latrine Uptake Achieving the public health goal of rapid latrine uptake necessitated an active role by the project in managing latrine sales activities. Professionalization of sales is a crucial investment for sanitation market development efforts to ensure that the critical activity of selling is deliberate and based on industry best practices. With the support of Whitten & Roy Partnership, the project developed a sales training approach that included systematic sales training and sales management processes and a package of supporting tools, which were developed in collaboration with 17 Triggers.

Driving Latrine Affordability With Access to Finance In partnership with IDinsight, we learned that under certain conditions, financing has the potential to increase latrine uptake fourfold at a $50 market price and decrease operating costs by 70%.

To contact iDE about a potential partnership, send an email to: WASH@ideglobal.org

Laying the Groundwork to Scale Up Sanitation Marketing in Ethiopia

Laying the Groundwork to Scale Up Sanitation Marketing in Ethiopia, 2016. WASHplus.

• Full text

Between February 2, 2015 and October 31st, 2015, with support from USAID’s WASHplus project and the Vitol Foundation, iDE implemented a project to scale up rural sanitation marketing in rural areas of four regions of Ethiopia (SNNPR (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples), Amhara, Oromia, Tigray). Building on the success of a pilot project that established the potential to scale sanitation marketing in rural Ethiopia, this project aimed to:

1. Continue developing and refining the design of the latrine products (slab and pit lining) as well as the business model for sales and delivery of the latrine;

2. Develop sales training and marketing materials for sales agents and manufacturers.

 

Market-based Approaches to Sanitation

Market-based Approaches to Sanitation, 2016. PSI.

• Full text, pdf

Market-based approaches can be applied to deliver a number of products (such as household, shared, or public toilets, using various designs and materials), services (like installation or waste removal and treatment) and forms of service delivery (free or pay-for-use).

This review focuses on models for household pit latrine construction and fecal sludge management.

WaterAid – How to sell toilets: a new approach to sanitation marketing in South East Asia

WaterAid – How to sell toilets: a new approach to sanitation marketing in South East Asia | Source: WaterAid Blog, April 22, 2015.

In Cambodia, an organisation named WaterSHED has developed a successful approach to marketing sanitation to remote communities which has reached 40% of Cambodians and is spreading fast across the Mekong region.

Excerpts: Established in 2010, WaterSHED – Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Enterprise Development – is a business development services provider working to bring effective and affordable water and sanitation products to the market, focusing on Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Only 28% of people in Cambodia are estimated to have access to sanitation – less in rural areas – and communities and businesses are not always interested in improving this or able to make change happen.

Local supplier with samples of toilet components. Photo: WaterAid/ Erik Harvey.

Although several organisations in the country were working on sanitation when WaterSHED was established, there was little coherence in their approaches, which Geoff Revell, Regional Programme Manager for WaterSHED, found frustrating. “While on one hand, there is space to try out new things, on the other, there are various approaches, some of which are subsidy driven, that are not very effective.”

A ‘hands-off’ approach

WaterSHED takes a ‘hands-off’ approach, using community leaders to generate demand for sanitation, working with the supply chain to offer appropriate and affordable products and identifying incentives to increase take-up. The organisation encourages businesses to consider adopting sanitation-related products that would complement other aspects of their wider business and thus enable them to diversify. It believes its role as a ‘market facilitator’ is finite, and that exit strategies need to be in place to enable private and public sector players to take over.

The sanitation marketing approach has six key components:

• Identify community leaders to make the pitch for sanitation.
  Generate demand for toilets using a combination of pride and disgust messages.
• Link communities to supply chains and vice versa, focusing on home delivery, affordability and promotional models.
• Enable suppliers to be reliable and trustworthy, offering good-quality products, information and advice.
• Make links to micro-financing where appropriate.
• Help identify appropriate and adaptable incentives.

Read the complete article