…hold three-day capacity building on Market-Based Sanitation

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – IN an effort to strengthen local sanitation markets and the overall Nigerian WASH sector, Self Help Africa, SHA, in collaboration with Population Services International, PSI, and ToiletPride, Wednesday, took it upon themselves to boost local markets’ sanitation and the Nigerian Water Sanitation and Hygiene, WASH, sector.

The collaboration led to three-day seminar on Market-Based Sanitation (MBS) from April 23 to 25, 2025, in Abuja. With the theme ‘Building Successful Markets for Sanitation in Nigeria’, which had in attendance key players across the WASH sector to basically explore scalable, sustainable solutions to the country’s sanitation challenges.

Despite progress in some areas, more than 48 million Nigerians still practice open defecation, according to the 2021 WASH NORM survey. This is largely due to a lack of affordable sanitation options and low awareness of hygienic practices, gaps that are especially stark in rural areas, where just eight per cent of the population has access to basic sanitation and hygiene services.

MBS presents a promising path forward. By supporting local businesses to sell affordable, quality sanitation products, MBS empowers communities to take charge of their own sanitation needs while building sustainable, self-reliant systems.

This approach is a central strategy under the WASH Systems for Health (WS4H) Programme, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

The seminar focuses on equipping participants with the knowledge and practical skills necessary to design, implement and scale MBS solutions, which are essential for improving access to sanitation in rural Nigeria. Leveraging PSI’s global expertise, participants will have the opportunity to review successful MBS models, review Nigeria’s MBS work, and collaborate on scaling them to meet the needs of communities across the country. With a successful sanitation market, Nigeria stands to gain healthier communities, stronger local economies, and a sustainable path to achieving universal access to safe sanitation.

The Head of Programmes, Self Help Africa, Shadrack Guusu, described the seminar as a timely and strategic engagement for Nigeria’s sanitation sub-sector.

Guusu said: “This seminar offers a valuable platform to reflect on ongoing MBS efforts, review current approaches, and bring in new insights from global experts like PSI. It is also an opportunity to build stronger foundations for optimising MBS in Nigeria, while fostering collaboration and capacity development across national and subnational governments, CSOs, the private sector, and development partners.”

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the Seminar, he disclosed that the programme is a four-year programme, and the Seminar is organized under the auspices of the Water System for Health Programme, and added that the implementation has already gone into one year in two States, which are Kano and Cross River.

He also explained that it is hard to find quality toilet facilities in most markets including motor-parks, and other public places, therefore, experts from the United States of America, and Kenya are at the Seminar to support the process, and basically, to bring global expertise and harness it in MBS, and also review what has been done “locally in Nigeria with the objective of improving what we have here because we already are doing something, improving on it so that we can accelerate. Nigeria missed the target of becoming open defecation-free as a nation in 2025 through the Clean Nigeria Use the Toilet campaign.”

Meanwhile, the Deputy Director of PSI’s WASH Programmes and Lead Facilitator in the seminar, John Sauer, emphasised the value of knowledge sharing and market development.

“PSI is pleased to share over 12 years of experience in market-based sanitation with Nigeria’s WASH sector. We believe that by adopting systems thinking and market-based approaches, Nigeria is well-positioned to accelerate progress toward achieving universal access to safe, sustainable sanitation,” he said.

The Executive Director, ToiletPride, Chukwuma Nnanna, said, “This MBS seminar provides a unique opportunity to strengthen systems that will enhance better access to toilet products and services for low income families in Nigeria. MBS holds the key to building local sanitation markets so that families can have real alternatives to the practice of open defecation and ToiletPride is excited to join PSI and Self Help Africa in supporting key actors at the front line of delivering sanitation services and programs in Nigeria.

“Now this is a shift from previous approaches where we just told people to use toilets and go home. Now we are saying, this is the toilet product you can use, this is how much it will cost, and we also link you to people that can help you construct it. We believe, based on evidence and work on the past, that if we take this approach, which the MBS approach will propose, we will make good progress as a country.”

According to the Head, Department of Sanitation and Hygiene, Cross River State, Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency, Nkwo Bassey, said, “The issue actually is that of sustainability. The people have been sensitized. We have been able to drive them to open defecation free status. The strategy to maintain the status we had obtained had been the issue.

“So, we are looking at sanitation-based marketing as a strategy that will help us, we call it to create demand and supply for sanitation products and services, which will help people generate income as they also push towards providing sanitation services in their area. So, we are thinking this three-day Seminar will go a long way to help us sustain our status as open defecation free Local Government Areas and even the States.”

Meanwhile, the Director, Investment, Kano State Investment, Commerce and Industry, Bashir Uba, said the Kano State Government is working to ensure citizens access quality toilet facilities, particularly, they are going for the plastic type, therefore, 44,000 of it would be purchased and distributed to the 44 Local Government Areas of the State, but the implementation modalities will be worked out by relevant ministries in the State.

However, he added that, “The challenge is the acceptance of the programme which we have now tried to eliminate those negligence or we try to eliminate, which people are currently understanding the value of toilets.

“People are looking how to improve their toilets, which they can adhere to environmental sanitation, and Kano State Government is also working tirelessly in order to improve sanitation activities. Looking at improvement in market areas and also looking at the commitment to the government to improve the toilet activity in Kano State.”