Entrepreneurs have a vital role to play in achieving universal water and sanitation, but many countries still lack the conditions needed for WASH businesses to thrive. This Perspective Piece discusses the components of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, emphasising the importance of a ‘success story’ to catalyse growth in the sector.
Despite the acknowledged importance of on-site sanitation, examples of safe and commercially viable faecal sludge management (FSM) services remain few and far between. This Topic Brief sets out the process and learning from a recent project – completed with funding from the Stone Family Foundation (SFF), and led by Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC) […]
Despite most residents of African and Asian cities depending on non-sewered sanitation, only a handful of sanitation authorities have addressed the management of faecal sludge from these systems. This Practice Note describes the launch of a faecal sludge management (FSM) service in the peri-urban area of Kanyama.
Appuyer les entrepreneurs à lancer des services pérennes d’assainissement peut être relativement simple. Cependant, des défis se posent en général quand il faut passer d’une entreprise appuyée par les bailleurs de fonds vers la vraie indépendance. Cette note se penche sur les obstacles à surmonter pour devenir une entreprise autosuffisante et discute comment progresser.
Supporting entrepreneurs to start up viable sanitation businesses can be relatively straightforward. However, challenges typically arise in the transition from donor-supported start-up to true independence. This note looks at the obstacles that need to be overcome in growing start-up businesses to become fully self-sustaining, and discusses how progress can be made.
A clear distinction is generally made between community and private management of water and sanitation services. For example, entrepreneurs who provide services are assumed to hold very different motivations, values and approaches to Community Based organisations (CBOs). WSUP often seeks to go beyond this “community” versus “private” dichotomy, to try to get “the best of […]
Extending water and sanitation services to the urban poor will often involve contractual relationships between small-scale entrepreneurs and municipalities or utilities. This Topic Brief draws on WSUP’s experience in the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme to illustrate ways of dealing with the challenges that arise when developing this type of contract, providing practical […]
Market-driven models for sanitation in low-income areas are of unquestionable importance, but there is broad consensus that the market needs to be supported by some sort of public revenue stream. One potentially pro-poor approach to revenue generation, as demonstrated in Lusaka and Ouagadougou, is to include a sanitation surcharge within water bills. This Discussion Paper […]
Clean Team is a sanitation business currently being trialled by WSUP in Kumasi (Ghana), in collaboration with Unilever. Using human-centred design methods, it approaches urban sanitation from a radically new angle: asking people in low-income communities what sort of toilet they really want (for example, a flush toilet in their own home), and working from […]
This Topic Brief describes a business model for delegated management of local water services, recently developed with WSUP support in the Kenyan Rift Valley town of Naivasha. The model is designed to ensure affordable but high-quality services for consumers, profitability for the operators, and sufficient revenues for sustainable asset maintenance.
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