Applying the life-cycle costs approach: Latrine costs in Burkina Faso

The costs presented in this document are the minimum costs of access to sanitation. They are inevitably less than the life-cycle costs of a sustainable sanitation service.

Moreover, the unit cost calculated on the basis of household expenditures can by no means be considered as an estimate of the ideal standard cost of a latrine. There is no evidence that expenditure incurred by households is sufficient to cover all the costs they have to bear (maintenance and rehabilitation expenditures, all or part of capital/construction expenditure). In this paper we present the real or observed costs, not the standard or ‘ideal’ costs.

So what is the purpose of this study? Its purpose is to reveal expenditures borne by households which are largely unacknowledged or even unknown. Usually, the cost of building a latrine is taken as an adequate base to quantify the expenditure of access to sanitation. However, a national programme which aims to raise coverage from 10% to 55% in just a few years cannot disregard the expenditure households must meet in order to maintain service levels after the construction of new infrastructures.

The English text is available on this page.

The original document in French is available on the WASHCost web site.