Incofin Water Access Acceleration Fund: Lessons Learned Report

Globally, 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and half of the world’s population is projected to live in water-stressed areas by 2050. The lack of proper water management infrastructure and appropriate sanitation, storage, and delivery methods create poor health and living conditions and cause deaths from preventable diseases due to contaminated water. Additionally, limited water supply continues the cycles of economic inequality as populations in rural areas often suffer disproportionately due to high costs of investing in water sanitation infrastructures as well as significant time spent on daily trips to collect safe water.

In recent years, a few business models have emerged with an aim to develop scalable and replicable solutions to provide safe drinking water in a financially sustainable, affordable, and safe manner. These include models such as safe water enterprises (SWE), regional pipe network, and water technology, which are ready for private sector investment.

The Water Access Acceleration Fund (W2AF) aims to scale access to affordable and safe drinking water by investing in innovative, early-to-growth stage businesses across the water access value chain; and catalyze the growth of the sector by demonstrating the financial viability of water businesses. This brief provides an overview of the Fund, summarizes lessons learned, and explores the impact of the catalytic funding provided by USAID through the INVEST initiative to launch the fund.