Giving Compass' Take:

• USAID Transform WASH project, led by PSI, sought to understand how to implement sanitation solutions throughout Ethiopia by surveying communities to hear their needs.

• What is the significance of community feedback in development projects? How can philanthropists help fund these sanitation projects?

• Read more about data for more sustainable WASH financing. 

Sparking growth in the sanitation market in Ethiopia has proven to be quite a roller coaster ride, full of twists, turns, and surprises. In 2017, the USAID Transform WASH project, led by PSI, set out to reach tens of thousands of Ethiopian households with improved toilets in five years. What we thought would be an easy formula for getting started — launching inexpensive, plastic, self-sealing toilet pans and, alternatively, plastic latrine slabs through small construction businesses — required more adaptation and innovation than expected.  And good evidence to guide us.

Initially, the Transform WASH team quickly identified the “low-hanging fruit” in the sanitation market; there were thousands of unimproved latrines across the country without hole covers.  If we could introduce an affordable way to cover open pits, which would reduce the awful smell and numerous flies that go in and out of the toilets, we could make fast progress to expand the sanitation product and service market.

But what we didn’t anticipate was that many households would buy SATO pans directly from retailers or sales agents and try to install them on their own without proper instructions, materials, or know how.  To understand this, we conducted a research study in the SNNP region, located in southwest Ethiopia, and we found several problems with improper installation.

So how can we harness the market to address these quality issues?  One solution is to design a SATO pan that is already embedded in a larger plastic slab with foot rests.  These are products that Lixil has already designed and will soon start manufacturing.  But our business partners in Ethiopia helped us innovate and come up with local solutions as well.  With these business partners we’ve created product packages that have expanded our business models to smaller scale entrepreneurs, who can address the large number of latrines that have been installed but still lack a concrete slab.

Read the full article about WASH sanitation by Monte Achenbach at psi.