Share research - Markets

Moving up the sanitation ladder with the help of microfinance in urban Malawi

shareadmin — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 17:20:50 +0000

This study by Chunga et al. presented findings from a stated preference survey in Malawi to examine whether access to microfinance for sanitation would significantly increase the proportion of households upgrading to improved pit latrines or alternative improved sanitation technologies (urine diverting dry toilet, fossa alterna, pour flush). The study presents a range of sanitation options at local market prices, initially without and then with a real microfinance option, to 1,300 households sampled across 27 low-income urban settlements in the two largest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre.

Download (250.04 KB) Richard Chunga Malawi

Microfinance for Sanitation Policy Brief

shareadmin — Thu, 04 May 2017 08:47:31 +0000

This policy brief highlights the SHARE Consortium’s contribution to the knowledge base on microfinance for sanitation. The brief defines sanitation microfinance and summarises research conducted in India and Tanzania. It then discusses the research gaps that still exist and provides recommendations for improving policies and programmes on microfinance for sanitation globally.

Download (408.21 KB) Microfinance for Sanitation Sophie Durrans India Tanzania

Why Financial Lending Institutions Are Not Willing to Provide Services to the Private Sector for Rural Sanitation and Hygiene

shareadmin — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 16:30:55 +0000

This paper summarises the findings of a SHARE-funded study that examined why lending institutions are unwilling to provide financial services to small scale (prospective) operators of sanitation and hygiene delivery within Nkhata Bay District, a low income rural district in northern Malawi. It also offers recommendations on how investment in sanitation in Nkhata Bay and other similar districts could be promoted.

Download (408.74 KB) Malawi

Sanitation Investment Tracker

shareadmin — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 10:10:51 +0000

The Sanitation Investment Tracker (SIT) is a suite of applications that can be used to track investment (and associated expenditure) in sanitation at household level. Potential applications of SIT are now being explored in a number of projects. Using mobile phone and web-based computer applications, SIT offers a complete solution to collect and analyse this financial information. It is powered by AkvoFLOW and uses this software to geo-localise, collect and analyse data from households.

SIT allows the user to gather better information on existing sanitation facilities and their costs directly from underserved populations in a more effective, quick and thorough manner. The data generated by SIT has the potential to support significant improvements in the monitoring and planning of WASH projects, programmes and policies.

Markets Completed sophie@tremolet.com 2011 to 2013 SIT was developed jointly by Trémolet Consulting and Akvo.org.

Public Finance for Sanitation

shareadmin — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 10:09:03 +0000

In most developing countries, more than 50% of the population still lack adequate sanitation facilities. In this context, public finance can be used to improve public health and remove constraints to achieving other development goals, such as girls’ education and universal access to health care. But in many cases, such public funds are not used effectively.

To evaluate how effective public funds had been in a number of cases, Trémolet Consulting conducted three case studies:

In rural Thailand, to take a retrospective look at the period between 1960 and 1999 during which Thailand went from 0% to almost 100% rural sanitation coverage;
In rural Bihar, India, to examine the way in which funds for the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) had been used between 2000 and 2010, and with which impact;
In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to evaluate the distribution of public funding for sanitation at city-level between 2006 and 2009.

Markets India Tanzania

WaterAid/Jon Spaull

Completed sophie@tremolet.com 2011 to 2013 This research was led by Trémolet Consulting

Microfinance for Sanitation

shareadmin — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:28:22 +0000

In 2010, SHARE initiated a package of work on sanitation microfinance. The research, led by Tremolet Consulting, was launched to explore whether microfinance can play a role to support access to improved sanitation. This 4-year research programme consisted of three distinct phases.

The first phase, carried out in 2010, was a desk-based review that mapped out global experiences with sanitation microfinance. It identified that the most significant experiences were taking place in India.

During the second phase, field visits were carried out in Tamil Nadu in southern India to extract lessons from existing experience and in Tanzania, to explore whether there was a potential to develop sanitation microfinance in such a market. India and Tanzania, both focus countries for SHARE, had very different levels of experience with respect to sanitation microfinance. Lessons were extracted from the India experience and their applicability to the Tanzanian context was evaluated.

A third phase was designed as an action-research project, to identify how financial institutions could be fostered so that they would provide financial services for sanitation. This action-research was conducted in Tanzania from December 2013 to January 2015 by Tremolet Consulting in partnership with MicroSave Consulting Ltd, a microfinance and financial inclusion specialist based in Kenya and WaterAid. Key questions the action-research sought to address through ‘learning by doing’ included:

Are financial institutions (FIs) interested in sanitation?
What type of assistance do they need in order to make the jump?
Where FIs are providing loans, how is that helping to increase access to improved sanitation?

The action-research involved the provision of smart subsidies to selected local research partners. These included microfinance institutions with no previous involvement in sanitation and NGOs that had been offering financing for sanitation, housing, or water investments. Organisations received training on market research and financial product development with a particular focus on understanding sanitation markets. As a result of these activities, all three partners initiated or significantly improved their activities in the area of sanitation microfinance.

Research was also carried out on issues related to financing water and sanitation small and medium enterprises. The extent to which micro and mesofinance is currently used in the sector was investigated, as well as the benefits their use and how the role of these financing tools could be developed with (or without) external support.

Markets India Kenya Tanzania WaterAid Completed sophie@tremolet.com 2010 to 2015 This research was led by Trémolet Consulting

Microfinance For Sanitation: What Is Needed To Move To Scale?

shareadmin — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 08:54:19 +0000

This paper presents findings from the SHARE-funded action-research in Tanzania which triggered selected financial institutions to offer financial products for sanitation and generated lessons for scaling up sanitation microfinance. It considers these in the context of broader developments in the microfinance markets and key findings from other donor-led initiatives.

Download (532.92 KB) Microfinance for Sanitation Tanzania External link

Private Sector Participation in the Delivery of Sanitation and Hygiene Services

shareadmin — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 09:15:18 +0000

This presentation features some preliminary results from SHARE-funded project Private Sector Participation in the Delivery of Sanitation and Hygiene Services, implemented by the Centre of Excellence in Water and Sanitation, Mzuzu University, Malawi. This presentation was given by Rochelle Holm at the Social Science Conference at Chancellor College in Zomba on the 26th of June 2014.

Download (3.53 MB) Malawi

Developing Microfinance for Sanitation in Tanzania

shareadmin — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 23:00:00 +0000

This report documents the findings of a SHARE-funded action-research project on sanitation microfinance in Tanzania. Taking place between December 2013 and January 2015, the project was the culmination of a broader research initiative which investigated how financing for sanitation can be mobilised via the use of microfinance in order to support sustainable access to improved sanitation facilities and/or services. This report describes the activities carried out under the action-research and extracts emerging lessons on the potential for developing sanitation microfinance through capacity building and networking.

Download (1.73 MB) Microfinance for Sanitation Tanzania

Toilets on Credit

shareadmin — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This video was produced by Tremolet Consulting and summarises the action-research they conducted for SHARE in Tanzania in which financial institutions were trained to provide financial services for sanitation. The video places this research project in the broader context and explains why microfinance should be explored further, and potentially, included in sanitation programmes.

Microfinance for Sanitation Tanzania External link