Moving Beyond Village-Centric Sanitation Approaches for Sustainable Service Systems Strengthening and Social Accountability

USAID’s Rural Access to New Opportunities in WASH (RANO WASH) Activity has been a key implementing partner in assisting the government, private sector, and communities in achieving the objectives outlined in the national Madagasikara Madio plan, which aims to eradicate open defecation by 2025. Prior to the launch of the campaign, only national governments were able to certify communities as open defecation free (ODF), but the centralized certification system was too onerous to reach the government’s goals of certifying all communities as ODF by 2025. 

RANO WASH was designed to strengthen the building blocks for sustainable WASH services in Madagascar; test models for private sector investment in WASH to improve coverage and quality of services; and increase demand and sustained behavior change for WASH at the community level. At the core are strong accountability mechanisms between government, private sector, and citizens to ensure that services are affordable and accessible to all.

This brief describes how RANO WASH exceeded its life of project targets by 2023.