Uganda RHVP II (a scale up of the $4.3m IFC pilot, closed in 2012), supported poor mothers in rural and disadvantaged areas of eastern and south western Uganda by providing access, through subsidized vouchers, to a package of reproductive health services, including antenatal care (ANC), deliveries with skilled medical attendants, postnatal care (PNC), treatment and management of selected pregnancy-related medical conditions and complications, and emergency transport. The package included services for elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (EMTCT), as part of ANC. The project was also designed to expand the capacity of health service providers in these rural and disadvantaged regions.

In West Bank and Gaza, two of the poorest governorates (Hebron and Bethlehem) at this project's start generated 34 percent of the 1.2 million tons of waste produced annually. The solid waste sector in these two governorates suffered from poor planning, high operations and maintenance costs, and limited financial resources.

GPOBA and IFC provided funding for an OBA project in the two governorates to increase access to municipal solid waste services and improve financial sustainability. The OBA subsidy partially supported to pay for costs associated with waste disposal at Al Minya landfill, allowing providers to focus resources on improving services at other points on the SWM chain. The subsidy was designed to decrease over time as fee collection increases, providing an incentive to strengthen efforts to collect solid waste fees. 

Related IFC feature story: Better Waste Disposal Offers Better Way of Life in the West Bank

Honduras has achieved a reasonable level of access to water supply and sanitation, but gaps in coverage remain, especially in rural and peri-urban areas. To help the Government of Honduras achieve universal coverage and improve service quality to low-income households, GPOBA funded an output-based aid facility. To be eligible for funding from the OBA facility, projects must meet specific criteria and payments are made against verifiable results.

Objective: In Zambia access to electricity remains low and is a key priority in the country's economic strategy. in 2015, over 47 percent of the population in urban and peri-urban areas and only 3 percent in rural areas had access to electricity, experiencing regular power shortages and load shedding. This was the first GPOBA-funded project in Zambia, designed to reach up to 22,000 beneficiaries in low-income households and 5,000 micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in urban and peri-urban areas using targeted subsidies.

Outputs: The project exceeded its target by 150%, extending energy access to 32,843 households and 5,117 micro and small enterprises, benefiting approximately 200,000 residents in low-income townships.

Objective: The Urban Sanitation Facility for the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area sought to increase access to improved sanitation for low-income communities. The project was to partially subsidize the cost of access to new facilities and adequate services, incentivizing service providers to extend improved sanitation to low-income households. In addition, the project leveraged financial resources from micro-financing institutions and supports the scale up of business models that included soft loans for the provision of sanitation facilities in low-income communities.

Outputs: The facility overperformed by achieving 116 percent of its planned output, and the OBA approach was scaled up by the parent International Development Association (IDA) project and adopted by the African Development Bank for its activities in the country’s sanitation sector. The project installed 7,685 sanitation facilities in Accra’s lower-income communities and reached 47,190 beneficiaries.

Significant effort went into building the market for household sanitation, both on the supply and demand sides, before the project could build the toilets at scale within the agreed timeframe set at the design stage. The project’s first three years were largely focused on building the capacity of metropolitan and municipal assemblies and small and medium-sized enterprises, education of households, and engagement with the microfinance institutions. A combination of factors—competition among suppliers, increased scale, improvement in technologies, inflation, depreciation of the local currency, and fund reallocations inside the project—contributed to a larger number of sanitation facilities than projected.

In rural Mali, where over 80 percent of the country’s population lives, the electrification rate is only 15 percent. GPOBA’s Rural Electrification Hybrid System Project provides incentives to private operators to increase access and make connection packages more affordable to the rural poor. The project targets poor households in rural, off-grid, remote areas that have been unable to get a mini-grid connection due to high investment cost. The project has two components—subsidies for investment in off-grid solutions, and the independent verification of outputs. 

Building on a highly successful pilot program concluded in 2015, which benefitted over 2.2 million low-income earners in Bangladesh through the installation of solar home systems (SHS) this scale-up expands access to renewable energy to also include mini-grids, solar irrigation pumps, and biogas plants.

The project, supported by a $15 million grant from DFID, fhe World Bank Group, the Government of Bangladesh, and other development partners, targeted low-income households in remote areas. Project implementation was to be gender-inclusive, with service providers targeting local women in marketing strategies and customer trainings, and consulting them during the installation process.

Outputs: The GPOBA grant brought down the capital cost of renewable energy io make the investment affordable to low-income rural, remote areas. This funding supported installation of 497,608 solar home systems, benefitting over 2.2 million people, and 41 solar irrigation pumps (SIPs), benefitting 1,356 poor farmers, as well as a 100 kW mini-grid, supplying energy to 253 poor rural households.

Gaining access to improved water supply and sanitation systems has been a persistent challenge in Kenya. In 2015, access rates were at only 30 percent for sanitation and 58 percent for water. Factors such as rapid rates of population growth, urbanization, and climate change have contributed to greater stress on Kenya’s water resources. Achieving universal access to safe water in Kenya will require an estimated $14 billion in investment in the water supply over the next 15 years, which cannot be achieved through public funding alone. In response to this problem, GPRBA in 2015 approved an $11.1 million grant to the Government of Kenya, supported by Sida. The Kenya Water and Sanitation OBA Fund for Low-Income Areas helps to incentivize urban water service providers (WSPs) to invest in water supply and sanitation improvement subprojects to benefit low-income households, by applying one-off RBF subsidies that help to make a connection to water and sanitation access more affordable. As part of the project, WSPs also receive technical assistance to support sub-project preparation and implementation. This includes support for the development of bankable proposals to secure commercial loans from domestic lenders on market terms to pre-finance the investments. Under this project, eight WSPs have signed loan agreements with three commercial banks to finance nine water and sanitation subprojects, valued at $14.3 million. The project is expected to help approximately 120,000 low-income beneficiaries gain access to water and/or sanitation, through 7,900 household sewer connections, 14,500 household water connections, and 40 improved community water points.

Although Sri Lanka has reached upper middle income country status, there is still a need to increase access to improved sanitation services for many residents. This project sought to increase access to domestic sanitation for low-income households. The grant subsidized the cost of improved access to sanitation services for households located in the Greater Colombo metropolitan area, where the National Water Supply & Drainage Board (NWSDB) provides and manages sanitation services. By 2019, the project had connected 44,000 beneficiaries through 8,800 toilets. 

(See special section on GPOBA's participation at 2017 Water Week for highlights on this project)