Water Access via Microcredit - Solene Morvant-Roux devient Professeure-Boursière du FNS

WATer access via microcredit: A Socio-economic analysis of ‘INclusive markets’ for the poor in the ‘South’

Solène Morvant-Roux devient Professeure-Boursière du FNS.

Résumé du projet WATSIN :

The main purpose of WATSIN is to analyze the growing integration between microcredit schemes and market-based improved water services in developing countries. While the main international organizations have set access to basic services such as water at the top of the development Agenda, shortages of sources of finance remain an important challenge for widening coverage for poor populations worldwide. In that context, a key feature of new emerging business models (called BoP markets) for water access through partnerships with microcredit programs is that end-users are supposed to be able to purchase water services (individual connections such as deep tubes, individual filters, chlorine, etc.). But although microloans are expected to break down the economic barriers for targeted populations to use such services, the available literature suggests that social political and cultural dimensions present further restrictions. Moreover, my own research gives evidence that poor populations are facing increasing levels of indebtedness, financial vulnerability and over-indebtedness. Drawing on this body of knowledge, WATSIN will offer a global analysis of the inclusion/exclusion processes at play in these interventions looking at the factors for demand (including the environment, the absorption capacities of target populations, and socioeconomic inclusion processes) and supply (actors involved, modes of delivery and political involvement). WATSIN is organized around three linked activities: 1) study the factors that frame the supply of a specific BoP market 2) Identifying the main drivers of improved water ‘service’ demand and usage for target populations and 3) Assessing the absorption capacity of the target population (households’ financial fragility in relation to new approaches to water provision).

In terms of methodology, WATSIN will rely on the following features:

• an interdisciplinary approach (sociology, political economy, economic anthropology).
• an original mix of quantitative and qualitative methods
• an emphasis on the generation of primary data

WATSIN's interdisciplinary will allow to greatly advance our understanding of how markets work for and are appropriated (or not) by the poorest and will highlight larger trends such as the commodification and financialization of essential needs.