60170 NOVEMBER 2010 Marketing Rural Sanitation Improvements in Tanzania ABOUT THE AUTHORS In 2009 the Water and Sanitation Program-Africa1 began working with 10 JASON CARDOSI local governments to test the effectiveness of marketing as a method to is the Water and Sanitation prompt households in rural Tanzania to invest in improving their sanitation Program's (WSP's) Country Coordinator for Tanzania and is facilities. This initiative--carried out with local and national governments, the Task Team Leader for this project. development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and private marketing firms delivering an integrated campaign--is resulting in KAPOSO MWAMBULI is WSP's Operations Officer for households upgrading their sanitation facilities. The emerging experiences Tanzania and supervises project activities in the 10 have enabled the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to secure funding participating districts. for a national sanitation campaign in fiscal year 2012. The campaign aims to ALICE INDODI increase sustained access to improved sanitation. is the Country Manager for EXP, Tanzania. APPROVING MANAGER Background1 two states in India and Indonesia that aim to Wambui Gichuri, Regional Team Leader, WSP-Africa. generate sanitation demand at scale, increase In rural Tanzania, basic sanitation coverage is the supply of sanitation products and services, about 80 to 90 percent, with most households and document and learn about impact and having some type of latrine.2 Despite this sustainability. Implementation in Tanzania high basic coverage, the quality of most began in 2009 and will continue until April latrines in rural areas is low, and many are not 2011. of sufficient quality to deliver the health and economic benefits of sanitation. In addition, The intervention mainly targets rural heads of because of low quality and dangerous household and their families and communities conditions, some people, especially children, through participatory approaches to try to may be practicing open defecation. achieve sustained behavior change. First, under the Community-Led Total Sanitation Ten districts are now participating in a approach, which aims to reawaken general marketing campaign that is raising the priority demand for sanitation, communities discuss of sanitation and prompting households to their sanitation facilities and behaviors and improve their sanitation facilities. This decide if and when to improve them. Next, approach focuses on subsidizing promotion based on household needs and wants, rather than hardware so that households marketing efforts propose the following make the decision to purchase and use specific solutions: improved facilities. Product Focus: While the project encourages Known as Total Sanitation and Sanitation households to make a variety of upgrades, Marketing, the initiative is coordinated by the special attention is given to sanplats. This two- Water and Sanitation Program-Africa and by-two-foot concrete slab is a consumer implemented by government, NGOs, and favorite and is smooth, washable, and safe for marketing firms in partnership with other children. The slab has a drop hole in the middle development organizations. It is part of a and comes with a concrete cover that seals the global project, which is also taking place in hole, effectively containing the feces. The slab is especially useful for upgrading existing 1 The Water and Sanitation Program (www.wsp.org) is a multi- donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support latrines, which is what most rural Tanzanian poor people in obtaining affordable, safe, and sustainable access households need to do in order to realize the to water and sanitation services. 2 DHS 2007 health and economic benefits of sanitation. SMARTLESSONS -- NOVEMBER 2010 1 After consulting with the government, the project then started collecting a few simple indicators on the quality of household sanitation and hygiene facilities though village registers that feed into the government's own systems that are linked to national development goals. The simpler register system generated interest by the national government, which has taken over leadership of its implementation nationally. The initiative is now supporting the government in this endeavor, rather than focusing on routine, project-specific monitoring. The more detailed implementation indicators--still of interest in scaling up-- could be covered by periodic surveys, such as the project's impact evaluation survey. 2) To bridge the knowledge-behavior gap, design the program around the consumer's immediate needs and wants. Campaign platform. According to consumer research carried out by the project, most Tanzanians know that good sanitation is important for good health, and about 80 to 90 percent own a basic Appropriate pricing: The price of a sanplat is about $5, with latrine. However most of these latrines are of poor quality. regional variations, and the cost to produce one is about $4. Many consumers stated that they knew they could improve their health with better latrines and cited the cost being Local Distribution: Because of the dispersed nature of too high and other priorities as reasons for not doing so. villages in Tanzania, transportation is a major constraint, When pressed, consumers saw safety, convenience, and and sanitation-related goods and services are not readily being perceived as being modern as immediate sanitation available in most communities. The initiative sponsored benefits. training for masons residing in or around villages in producing and selling sanitation upgrades. The project pretested a number of concepts though focus groups with rural heads of households and family members Promotion: Promotion is taking place through mass media in term of what would make them want to invest in (radio) and interpersonal events and activities, such as upgrading their sanitation facility. This led to a campaign entertainment road shows. platform of Choo Bora Chawezekana ­ Tumeamua Maendeleo Hadi Chooni, or A good toilet is possible--our To date, the initiative has trained 470 masons in construction development extends all the way to the toilet. This can be methods for upgrading latrines as well as sales and business more loosely translated as, "The red carpet goes all the way skills, prompted 711 communities to draft declarations and to the toilet." action plans, and designated individuals to follow up and ensure that all households have sanitation facilities. The Focus group participants picked this message as one that initiative has reached 80,000 people through experiential made sanitation sound more important while also marketing events and exposed 3.5 million households to a addressing concerns about price. national radio soap opera. Reporting by the 10 participating districts suggests that thousands of households have 3) Integrate supply and demand activities. invested in improving their sanitation facilities. Lessons Learned 1) To make monitoring and evaluation easier for everybody, fall in line with national reporting structures. A key objective of the project is to learn how to sustainably scale up access to improved sanitation. To help generate lessons, the project designers initially set up a project monitoring information system that covered a number of areas of the intervention. To collect data, local officials, volunteers, and implementers would report on a number of routine activities, such as mason characteristics, sales, and assessments of community demand. Response rate tended Trained masons. to be very low. 2 SMARTLESSONS -- NOVEMBER 2010 In general, early sanitation promotion efforts the supply of molds for casting sanplats. In focused on improving general sanitation addition, developing a national training demand and then moved on to the various program and attracting the masons with methods of addressing supply, with mixed business acumen is a lengthy and costly results. Practitioners found that if demand is process. The initiative is now shifting its focus created and no immediate solution is offered, to local hardware suppliers and working out demand may taper off. This initiative focused incentives for their entry into the sanitation on training masons to construct and sell business. In this approach, the supplier would upgrades first or in parallel with demand supply masons with raw materials and pay creation. In one district, masons were trained them to take and fill orders. The initiative is four months before demand activities also looking to expand technological options reached the ward. The masons managed to through a design competition that includes sell upgrades to 48 households from July service delivery models. through October 2010. Then, when the experiential marketing events arrived in their Conclusion communities, they managed to sell 111 upgrades in a single day. Experience in the 10 districts enabled the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to 4) Strengthen the supply chain. secure funding for a three year national sanitation campaign that will eventually reach Although training masons to produce and sell all districts in the country. The original 10 sanitation upgrades as entrepreneurs is districts will continue to serve as learning effective in some areas, it may not be a districts for the national campaign through scalable model. Masons often lack access to ongoing work in areas such sanitation value capital and sometimes depend on local chain strengthening, and an impact governments for up-front support, such as evaluation. DISCLAIMER IFC SmartLessons is an awards program to share lessons learned Experiential marketing activities. in development-oriented advisory services and investment operations. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of IFC or its partner organizations, the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. IFC does not assume any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this document. Please see the terms and conditions at www.ifc.org/ smartlessons or contact the program at smartlessons@ifc.org. SMARTLESSONS -- NOVEMBER 2010 3