In Kenya, community-run, small-scale water systems play a crucial role in supplying and improving access to water services. In 2006, GPOBA approved an innovative pilot project to increase access and improve efficiency in water services for the poor in rural and peri-urban areas of central Kenya through investments in selected community subprojects. Investments into these small piped-water subprojects were financed through commercial loans and community equity blended with output-based subsidies provided by GPOBA.

In Cameroon, network water supply coverage is estimated at less than a third of the urban population. With the support of the World Bank and other agencies, the government of Cameroon took a significant step to reform the urban water sector, delegating the service provision to an international private operator. The public-private partnership approach incorporates an output-based aid scheme aimed at addressing the cost of connection fees for low-income households. 

In the Philippines' Metro Manila region, delivery of water supply and sewerage services in the is the responsibility of the government-owned Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS). Since 1997, MWSS has contracted out provision of services via two 25-year concessions based on a geographic division of the urban area: the east zone was contracted to the Manila Water Company (MWC), and the west zone to Maynilad Water Services (MWSI). This GPOBA funding builds on the Manila Water’s flagship program, launched in 1998, the “Water for the Community” or Tubig Para sa Barangay (TPSB) program, which provides a regular supply of clean, safe, and affordable drinking water to low-income communities in urban areas at very affordable installment rates poor. 

In Vietnam, achieving sustainable provision of water services for communities in rural areas has been a challenge for years. About 74 percent of the Vietnamese population is concentrated in rural areas, yet just 48 percent of households have access to clean water, compared with 82 percent in urban areas. GPOBA partnered with the East Meets West Foundation (EMWF) to explore the OBA approach for meeting these rural water challenges. The OBA approach uses an innovative risk sharing mechanism that enhances EMWF’s performance while maintaining high value for money and focusing on sustainability. The success of the project facilitated the right environment for scaling up the OBA approach and encouraged private-sector participation in the construction and management of future water and sanitation schemes, an objective of the national Socialization Policy.

The health care system in the Kingdom of Lesotho is over-burdened with demand consistently outstripping the state’s ability to provide vital health care services, particularly to poor people. In partnership with the World Bank, GPOBA supported the design and implementation of a public-private partnership for the replacement of the main public hospital in the country, Queen Elizabeth II Hospital. The GPOBA grant subsidized the cost of access to services for the residents of Maseru District, the capital city and home of nearly one-third of the country’s population.

The city of Mumbai has over 6 million slum dwellers, a large number of whom do not have access to legal electrical connections. The Improved Electricity Access project was a pilot project that sought to increase access to safe electricity supply in urban slums in Mumbai through targeted output-based subsides. The pilot focused on select slums within Mumbai, but had the potential for scale-up in other communities in Mumbai and across India.  

In Uganda, large segments of the urban poor are not connected to piped water systems and are therefore paying large sums of money for consuming water of inferior quality from private vendors. National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), in charge of providing water services continually seeks to improve coverage for serving the urban poor through piped schemes. To support this effort GPOBA provided funding to design an OBA scheme to focus on extending connections to Kampala’s urban poor using performance-based subsidies. The project targets the poor living in slum areas in and around Kampala as well as the peri-urban areas and provide these poor with subsidized connections to the water supply network.

While 90 percent of Bolivia’s urban homes are electrified, rural access to electricity remains below one-third. The Decentralized Electricity for Universal Access project aimed to increase rural access to electricity, as well as information and communications technologies via decentralized public-private partnerships that incorporate output-based aid subsidies. The project provided subsidies to private providers for the sale, installation and after-sale service and market development activities for solar home systems in rural households, micro-enterprises, schools and clinics. 

Yemen has a ratio of 570 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (according to 2000 estimates), with only 27 percent of births attended by skilled birth attendants, as well as a high fertility rate (average of seven children per woman). Poor women often go through pregnancy and deliver at home without seeking any medical care, due to factors such as poor access to quality health services, distrust of healthcare providers, lack of female doctors, and the price of care.This GPOBA program seeks to address some of the barriers to safe motherhood by improving healthcare services and working with poor communities to increase use of these services. The project closed before completion of the project due to political and security environment in Yemen. The World Bank suspended disbursements under the Yemen portfolio effective July 28, 2011. 

SOUL website project description

In Mozambique, household and yard tap connections have only been available to those who can afford to pay the connection costs. Therefore, low-income communities who cannot afford the connection fees have been excluded from getting service. This project introduced an innovative Output-Based Aid approach, designed to ensure ownership and demand-driven service provision, and to set the basis for long-term operational and financial sustainability. The objective of the Project was to increase access to piped water for the poor in the city of Maputo. The project was implemented by Mozambique’s Water Supply Assets and Investment Fund (FIPAG) to extend access to safe, reliable water services to some of Mozambique’s poorest households.