Every day millions of households acquire sanitation products and services from private suppliers in developing countries on their own and without subsidy. In fact, most new household sanitation in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world has been and continues to be privately acquired by households through the market. The contribution of public-sponsored construction actually represents a very small fraction of the gains in progress over the last decade as can be seen by comparing all public government and donor investment in sanitation in Asia, Africa and Latin America combined between 1990 to 2000, estimated at US$ 3.1 billion, with the cost of providing the most basic on-site technologies to the 1 billion people who gained access during that period, estimated at a minimum of US$ 26 up to 91 billion, depending on which of the most basic on-site technologies is assumed (Evans et al. 2004). For example, private action by households via the market place has accounted for all of the gain in coverage in Kampala, Uganda in the 1990s (Cairncross 2004), much of it in Bangladesh during and since the 1980s and 1990s (Loung 1994) and in rural Indonesia and Vietnam in the last decade (Mukerjee 2000; WSP-EAP 2002), and virtually all of it in rural Benin through 2000 (Jenkins 1999; Reiff and Clegbaza 1999). Clearly, demand is growing in many contexts and conditions as measured in Ghana where an estimated 140,000 households installed home sanitation for the first time on their own in 2003 (Jenkins and Scott 2005)

The sanitation sector has much to gain by recognizing the value of what is already going on in the market place and the significant contributions private households and commercial suppliers have made to improving global access.