"Promoting Sanitation in Africa: Who Buys Latrines, Where and Why?"

New and innovative approaches to improving sanitation are critical to accelerate access and reach the Millennium Development Goal 10, Target 7 of halving by 2015 the portion of the world’s population without adequate sanitation, now estimated at 2.6 billion. Demand-responsive approaches are advocated as essential to achieving sustainable improvements in developing countries where sanitation coverage is low. Among these, marketing and market-based delivery of sanitation products and services holds particular promise. Understanding demand for improved sanitation and what drives households’ to change their home sanitation practices is fundamental for developing and planning demand-responsive sanitation programs likely to accelerate access. In this presentation, household studies of sanitation adoption behavior in Benin, Ghana and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa are presented, providing insights into household motivations and constraints of adopting improved sanitation and their patterns across settings. Implications for developing marketing and other new approaches to sanitation promotion in Africa and elsewhere are explored.