Type: Perspective Piece

Sanitation businesses can improve services for all urban residents – including the poorest – but this requires carefully designed pricing strategies and measures to reduce risk.

This publication outlines WSUP’s approach to incentivising the private sector to target low-income customers, and how this is being applied to achieve commercial viability, affordability and equity of FSM service provision in Bangladesh.

The report shares four lessons from our work supporting SWEEP, a faecal waste collection service operating in Bangladesh:

1. Reduce the risk of entry

2. Include low-income customer targeting as a contractual requirement

3. Promote preferential pricing to improve the offering to low-income customers

4. Provide smart support that catalyses citywide change

This publication is part of a series examining the different ways in which public-private collaboration is being realised in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Zambia – three countries where WSUP is working with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to improve the enabling environment for urban and peri-urban Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) services.

This report details the context against which Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Zambia need to operate, before going on to present one example PPP that is improving urban sanitation services in Lusaka.

Zambia has had a specific legal framework for PPPs since passing the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Act in 2009. The PPP process is headed by the PPP Unit, originally located in the Ministry of Finance but since absorbed into the Zambia Development Agency. PPPs in Zambia are very flexible, referring to “any form of partnership between public authorities and the private sector for the construction, management and/or provision of an infrastructure or public service”.

This publication is part of a series examining the different ways in which public-private collaboration is being realised in Bangladesh, Kenya and Zambia – three countries where WSUP is working with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to improve the enabling environment for urban and peri-urban faecal sludge management services.

This report details the Kenyan context for Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), before going on to present one example PPP that is improving urban sanitation services.

Kenya has a specific PPP legal framework, orchestrated by a PPP unit that sits within the National Treasury. The framework is based on international best practice principles for PPPs, although the system has not yet been tested throughout a project cycle (i.e. from the initial design of a project to its eventual operation, oversight and completion).

Kenya’s national government receives additional financial support from the World Bank’s Infrastructure Finance and Public Private Partnerships Project, which is investing US$ 40 million to support PPP projects and strengthen the enabling environment in Kenya.

This publication is part of a series examining the different ways in which public-private collaboration is being realised in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Zambia – three countries where WSUP is working with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to improve the enabling environment for urban and peri-urban Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) services.

This report details the national context for Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Bangladesh, before going on to summarise one PPP that is now moving into the scale-up phase.

The City Corporation and Pourashava Acts (2009) assign responsibility for sanitation services to local government, but the mandate for faecal sludge management (FSM) is unclear in cities where there is a Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) and a City Corporation, as in the case of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi.

Recent moves to clarify responsibility for urban FSM have culminated in the development of an Institutional and Regulatory Framework for FSM: while there were no official private actors involved in urban sanitation and FSM until WSUP’s intervention began in Dhaka, the draft framework highlights the potential for private sector participation.

WSUP is working to promote entrepreneurial activity in the Kenyan WASH sector. This Perspective Piece sets out a way forward, arguing that the introduction of a WASH-sector forum is essential for creating a thriving ecosystem.

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.

Substantial local government investment is essential for sustainable services, but difficult to achieve. Barriers include institutional lack of clarity over responsibilities (particularly in sanitation provision), weak capacity to collect and manage revenues, unpredictable transfers from national to local government, and a lack of data on past spending and its effectiveness. This paper looks at some ways in which WSUP and Water For People are working to strengthen this link in the investment chain.

Implementing agencies like WSUP, Water For People and IRC are of course accountable to their funders, including major bilaterals and foundations and naturally, these funders must track the effectiveness of their spending. However, short budget cycles and the need to demonstrate “value for money” can often encourage over-simplistic measurement of success in terms of short-term outputs, rather than genuinely sustainable services. This note proposes some ways forward!