Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana have some of the lowest rates of access to improved sanitation in the world, at 20%, 22% and 15% respectively. There are minimal services for safe disposal and treatment of waste, meaning that even if a household has access to a toilet, the fecal sludge is rarely disposed of appropriately and the waste soon returns to the environment, often being dumped into nearby water sources. As a result, households face poor living conditions in environments contaminated by feces, causing the spread of deadly diseases.
The Sanitation Service Delivery Program (SSD) is a USAID/West Africa urban sanitation project implemented in Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana by PSI in collaboration with PATH and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). The goal of the program is to improve sanitation outcomes by developing and testing scalable business models that engage private sector service providers and by contributing to the creation of a strong enabling environment for sanitation in West Africa.
This project brief provides an overview of the SSD project and the key components that are helping the project create a thriving sanitation marketplace in Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.