The study calculated programme costs, and local investments for four community-led total sanitation (CLTS) interventions in Ghana and Ethiopia.
Jonny Crocker, Darren Saywell, Katherine F. Shields, Pete Kolsky, Jamie Bartram, The true costs of participatory sanitation : evidence from community-led total sanitation studies in Ghana and Ethiopia.
Science of The Total Environment, vol.
601–602, 1 Dec 2017, pp: 1075-1083.
The few studies that report costs use top-down costing methods that are inaccurate and inappropriate.
We used implementation tracking and bottom-up, activity-based costing to assess the process, program costs, and local investments for four CLTS interventions in Ghana and Ethiopia.
Financial costs and value-of-time spent on CLTS by different actors were assessed.
The program cost of CLTS was $30.34–$81.56 per household targeted in Ghana, and $14.15–$19.21 in Ethiopia.
Most program costs were from training for three of four interventions.
This is the first study to present comprehensive, disaggregated costs of a sanitation and hygiene behaviour-change intervention.