USAID Program to address Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Western Kenya

Deadline: 9-Dec-20

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is issuing this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to seek participants to co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate on research and development (R&D) interventions to address the need for sustainable water and sanitation services in Western Kenya.

USAID invites organizations and companies to submit an Expression of Interest, through the co-creation process, will strive to design an activity that will:

• Build a robust sanitation and hygiene market to enable the adoption of higher quality latrines and county-wide access to hygiene products; and
• Ensure county-wide sustainable drinking water services to households, including effective management of water resources.

Areas of Interest

The Expression(s) of Interest must include a proposed R&D intervention to address one or both of the areas listed below with the ultimate goal of achieving sustainable water and sanitation services in Western Kenya.

• County-wide approach to strengthening markets for sanitation and hygiene products and services.
  • To address the need for progressively realizing higher quality household sanitation facilities in
    rural areas, new approaches that go beyond the traditional “Do-It-Yourself” model promoted through CLTS are needed. Market-based solutions are critical for improving the quality of household sanitation and hygiene products. This activity will work to counter previous, full subsidy approaches, to market sanitation and hygiene products as desirable and aspirational, rather than relying on health promotion to motivate adoption. The need for menstrual hygiene management facilities and products has often been neglected in sanitation and hygiene initiatives, so this activity must work to develop new approaches to incorporate this into marketbased sanitation activities.
• Ensuring county-wide sustainable drinking water services to households, including effective management of water resources.
  • In an effort to facilitate better delivery of services, as opposed to funding infrastructure and direct service provision, this activity will apply a range of approaches to both professionalize rural water services and strengthen water utilities, while protecting the watersheds and effectively managing the water resources that these services rely upon. In urban areas served by formal Water and Sanitation Companies (WASCOs), there is a need to improve the
    operational performance of these utilities in order to allow them to engage more effectively with commercial finance. However, much of the population in these counties lie outside the service area of these WASCOs. In those rural areas, the activity will also need to develop and test new ways to work with the private sector, government, and civil society to expand services, improve the quality of services, monitor service delivery, and enforce environmental standards. New approaches to address the challenge of providing reliable operations and maintenance services to these disparate water systems will be needed to address the on-going challenge of functionality.

Factors

Such approaches should consider incorporating the following factors:

• Geography: Target counties for this activity are: Bungoma, Busia, Homa Bay, Kakamega, Kisii, Kisumu, Migori, and Siaya. Selected counties beyond these may be proposed if appropriate, but interventions should be targeted. It is not necessary to propose work in all target counties. Proposed activities should consider how to work county-wide, including urban, peri-urban, and rural areas as appropriate. It may also be necessary to expand the boundaries of work outside of these target counties in order to take a watershed approach to the management of water resources critical for water service delivery.
• Collaboration and coordination: Partnership with county government(s), the private sector, and civil society where the work is located will be required, and partnerships and synergies with other relevant USAID and donor activities will be critical. Activities should consider how they will co-plan and co-implement all work with the respective county government(s), and how they will coordinate and collaborate with others working in the sector, as well as those implementing health, nutrition, agriculture, and environment activities in the targeted geography.
• Private sector engagement: Activities should consider how to engage private sector actors. Approaches should prioritize alignment with private sector core business functions and not corporate social responsibility goals, explore opportunities to promote equity and reach the most vulnerable, and consider how to incentivize private sector entities to enter the market and leverage additional funds and expertise needed. Where appropriate, activities may leverage existing USAID tools for engaging with the private sector, such as those available through the Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
• Learning and adaptation: Given that this activity will be developing and testing new approaches to addressing the development challenges, a continuous cycle of learning and adaptation will be necessary. Activities should consider how they will collect and make use of evidence throughout the implementation period.
• Environmental compliance: USAID promotes environmentally sound design by requiring that all USAID funded activities undergo an environmental review and comply with Title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 216, commonly known as 22 CFR 216 or “Reg 216.”

Eligibility Criteria

• USAID will invite selected public, private, for-profit, and nonprofit organizations, as well as institutions of higher education, public international organizations, non-governmental organizations, U.S. and non U.S. governmental organizations, multilateral and international donor organizations.

For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=329710