Page 31 - Unlocking innovation

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toilet Board coalition toilet Accelerator program
Bringing development partners and sanitation entrepreneurs together
the challenge
partnering with the private sector to accelerate access to sanitation
Although in the development sector, sanitation is typically categorized as a public service, sanitation is also a multibillion-dollar business. As a development partner, ADB has access to governments and implementation agencies and the capacity to scale good
ideas with potential to achieve development goals. For its part, the private sector has invaluable expertise, both in cost-e cient product design, and in how to reach the poorest households. The challenge is nding a mechanism through which both parties together can achieve a common goal: Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), universal access to sanitation.
learning point
the innovation
supporting the toilet Board coalition’s work in Asia
The Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) is a business-led partnership and platform enabling private sector engagement and close collaboration between private, public, and nonpro t sectors. The TBC’s Toilet Accelerator Program supports sanitation economy entrepreneurs to bring to fruition commercially viable innovations.
ADB signed a letter of agreement with the TBC to work together. The innovation pilot included pilot projects in Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines, where the TBC has supported businesses through its Toilet Accelerator program.
By staying engaged despite internal process obstacles that made it di cult to do so, ADB has gained a valuable partner in the sanitation sector. The pilot created a mechanism through which ADB could build a partnership that otherwise would not have come about.
What went well
sector enterprise, ADB missed out on the opportunity to shape the TBC agenda at the outset in What accordance with ADB’s poverty eradication mission. Now that the TBC has already matured, the could have window of opportunity for that in uence has closed. The time lag from application to signing the been better letter of agreement with the TBC—16 months—was also unreasonably long.
By being too wary of engaging with the private sector in what was traditionally for the bank a public
24 Unlocking Innovation for Development