How to Leverage the Private Sector to Build Markets for Rural Sanitation
By Msafiri Chagama, Enterprise Development Specialist, and Nick McClure, Manager - Resonance Global
Globally, one in three people lacks access to sanitation services, resulting in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and billions of dollars in government healthcare expenses each year. Most people affected by the sanitation crisis live in sparsely populated rural areas, making it difficult for governments and aid organizations to develop and maintain cost-effective infrastructure to address the problem.
But sanitation innovators are finding creative ways to adapt, with products and services that don’t require extensive infrastructure development and that are affordable enough to appeal to low-income customers.
In Tanzania, Resonance worked to strengthen markets and distribution channels for rural sanitation, including supporting sanitation innovators in scaling their products and services to the rural areas that need them most. Through USAID’s Tanzania Water Resources Integration Development Initiative (WARIDI), Resonance partnered with organizations across the value chain to generate customer demand, reduce startup costs, and stimulate organizational growth. The outcome? Thirteen new water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) products and services extended across 20 rural and peri-urban districts; nearly 500 microenterprises trained as WASH retail partners or distributors; and three promising WASH product companies provided with extensive coaching and funding, leading to larger awards or private sector investment.
Many of the lessons learned from WARIDI are specific to Tanzania, but a few apply more broadly to sanitation challenges in rural and peri-urban areas. At the close of this five-year project, we’ve developed four key insights about partnering with the private sector to build markets for sanitation in emerging markets worldwide.