Catalytic Partnerships in the East African WASH Sector

The Catalytic Funding and Partnerships Report documents key insights from the Innovate4WASH (I4WASH) Marketplace Forum 2025 held in Malindi, Kenya. The conference focused on scaling resilient, climate-smart Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) solutions through innovative and sustainable financing models.

The report highlights that the main barrier to scaling WASH in Kenya is no longer technology, but access to patient, flexible, and catalytic financing combined with strong partnerships.

Key themes include:

• Innovative Financing Models: Promotion of blended finance, quasi-equity, revenue-share models, results-based financing, digital lending, and impact investment as alternatives to rigid traditional bank loans.
• Catalytic Capital: The need for concessional and risk-tolerant funding to de-risk early-stage and high-impact WASH enterprises and attract commercial investors.
• Role of Partnerships: Collaboration between banks, microfinance institutions, NGOs, counties, utilities, manufacturers, and international networks to scale WASH solutions.
• Technical Assistance (TA): Emphasis on combining financing with business support, governance strengthening, and performance monitoring to make enterprises investment-ready.
• ICN-WASPA Catalytic Mechanism: Launch of a challenge model linking Kenyan water utilities with global cleantech innovators, providing pilot contracts and blended finance packages to develop bankable projects.
• The report concludes with a call to establish structured catalytic funding mechanisms and stronger multi-stakeholder partnerships to close Kenya’s WASH financing gap and accelerate progress toward sustainable, climate-resilient water and sanitation systems.

Download Catalytic Funding and Partnerships – I4WASH 2025