The U.S. government is investing $31 million in a five-year project to revolutionize sanitation, hygiene, and gender equality in Ethiopia. The USAID-funded Markets for Sanitation (M4S) initiative aims to significantly improve access to essential services across the country.
The project focuses on reaching the most vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls. The USAID-funded Markets for Sanitation (M4S)builds on the success of the USAID Transform WASH project, an eight-year, $47.5 million initiative that supported over 500 sanitation businesses and helped more than one million Ethiopians gain access to improved sanitation services.
The new USAID M4S project will be implemented in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, Sidama, Somali, South Ethiopia, Central Ethiopia, and Southwest Ethiopia. It aims to provide 5.4 million people with access to basic sanitation and enable 180,000 women and girls to access menstrual health and hygiene products.
The USAID M4S will address long-standing challenges in Ethiopia’s sanitation and hygiene sector by promoting market-based solutions that drive sustainable and inclusive growth. By fostering a competitive sanitation market, the project seeks to ensure that sanitation products and services are both affordable and accessible to all, creating lasting economic and social benefits for communities.
“We are committed to engaging the private sector as collaborators in this effort. By helping increase both the demand for sanitation and hygiene products and the capacity of Ethiopian businesses to produce them, this activity will unlock the power of markets to drive change and give Ethiopian citizens ownership of that change,” said USAID Ethiopia Mission Director, Scott Hocklander.
The Markets for Sanitation project is part of USAID’s growing Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) portfolio. USAID is currently investing $190 million to expand access to safe water supplies and basic sanitation in rural and urban areas. These efforts also encourage greater investment in water-related infrastructure to ensure sustainable and resilient systems.