Life-cycle cost analysis for Splash school interventions in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Update 2021

The WISE project is set to provide safe water, good sanitation, and healthy hygiene to all the schools in Addis Ababa. To put these services in place, both AAEB and SPLASH are investing considerable amounts of money. Hand washing stations, drinking water filters, latrine blocks are being built and hygiene behaviour change campaigns rolled out. But how much does it cost to keep these running once the project is over? Who will finance these operational costs?

IRC WASH did a study in 2019 to look at all the different costs (using the so-called – Life-Cycle Cost Approach- LCCA) and has now updated it for 2021. This has provided the following insights:

• The WISE project has adapted since 2019 and has been raising the provided service levels. Particularly by reducing intermittent water, by including faecal sludge aspects, and by broadening hygiene training with janitors. This has led to an increase in CapEx cost per student from ETB 886 to ETB 3103. The Main CapEx cost is sanitation (63%) and therefore improving costs effectiveness of sanitation should have priority.
• The annual recurrent expenditure is ETB 256 per student per year, of which ETB 184 (71%) is covered by Taxes (School budgets), 6% by Tariffs (parents paying for soap), and ETB 57 by Transfers (Splash mainly on support costs and operation costs for water).
• To achieve good quality basic service levels ETB 595 per student per year on recurrent cost is needed. This gives a current finance gap of ETB 338, which is mainly toilet paper for students, which arguably should be covered by Tariffs (parents or other sources of income).

The key to securing funds for sustainable funding for WASH is working with sub-city and woreda staff on the allocation of the available budget. The annual recurrent expenditure of ETB 184 per student per year should be raised to ETB 240 to remove dependency on SPLASH funds for annual recurrent costs. This is respectively 6% and 4% of primary and secondary school fund allocation.