Story - Ignatious' One Stop Shop

Writer- Melissa Kyeyune | NGO- Water For People | Country- Uganda | SDG- Goal 6, Clean Water and Sanitation | Year- 2017 |

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation | A piece of Ignatious Epuwat’s company SANQUA Engineering can be found in almost every rural home in Asuret sub county, Soroti district. Originally providing generic construction material, the company was identified and mentored to start offering sanitation products and services under Water For People’s ‘Sanitation As A Business’ approach. The partnership went beyond training.

“Water For People gave us a lot of our startup stock,” Ignatious says. This stock includes ring liners, concrete slabs and Sato pans to for improving latrines.

SANQUA Engineering has now cornered the market in Asuret and sells products daily to retailers, masons and other individuals.

“All 300 of the initial satopans that we were provided with under SAAB, have been bought. That is a huge achievement for us.”

Under the SAAB approach, Water For People aims to develop and demonstrate the ability to cost effectively move people up the sanitation ladder using a sanitation as a business industry facilitation approach.Water For People is using community leaders to create demand for appropriate sanitation structures, but is also identifying who will provide these goods and services.

SANQUA Engineering has proven to be a very reliable partner. This is partly due to the company’s prior knowledge of constructing sanitation facilities on highways.


“We have constructed sanitation units at bus stops along Soroti-Moroto road, Soroti-Lira road and Soroti-Kampala road.”

Now however, SANQUA Engineering is known for so much more. Each household that has participated in the SAAB approach by taking out a loan and paying a mason to build a new latrine, knows that the mason will get the material from SANQUA Engineering and it will be of high quality.
Masons also come to SANQUA Engineering to be trained.

Dominic Otiangel, a mason and trainer based at SANQUA Engineering, explains. “I was one of the first 5 masons trained by Water For People, here at SANQUA Engineering. After that one day training, I went out and also started training masons in different sub counties.”

Today, those trained masons are facilitated by the district to go to homes and advertise their services with a ‘sanitation album’ which contains illustrations of the different latrines that the household can buy.

A bamboo latrine goes for UGX 450,000 (approx. $120) and the price goes up as the material gets stronger, with cement latrines being the most expensive. Once the client chooses the latrine type, the mason makes an order for material from none other than SANQUA Engineering.

According to Ignatious Epuwat, this is only the beginning for his company.

“We have achieved one quarter of our business plan. We now want to get into pit-emptying.”

Now that Water For People has achieved the ‘capture’ stage of the sanitation value chain by introducing the community to safe and clean latrines, ‘pit-emptying’ is the next aim.

Thankfully, it looks like SANQUA Engineering is ready to take on that mantle as well.

Organization website: https://www.waterforpeople.org/where-we-work/uganda