Sanitation marketing in Kenema, Sierra Leone: challenges to scale-up and opportunities for success

A GOAL Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project that began in 2008 recorded great success but later an ODF slippage rate close to 30% was witnessed. Subsequent assessments have found this to be caused by dissatisfaction with the quality of latrines built and a lack of access to markets for improved sanitation hardware. As a result GOAL initiated a sanitation marketing project in 2013 that aimed to improve the access to this market. Initial work focused on assessment of demand and supply at a local level, and some assessment of the institutional environment to assess the projects likely challenges. Demand was found to be high, particularly for aspirational products, but a lack of affordability and remoteness to target communities increasing prices were likely to become key challenges. Following 12 months of formative work, including product development and branding, sales commenced with the sale of 394 products in 3 months.