Sanivation: Turning Human Waste into Clean Fuel for the Kenyan Industry
- yanabijoor
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
What is the problem? In much of Kenya, there are no sewer facilities at all. In Naivasha, a mid-sized city in Nakuru County, 80 percent of residents lack sewer connections, and their fecal sludge is rarely disposed of safely. The result is a public health crisis: contaminated groundwater, polluted lakes, disease outbreaks, and an environment where children grow up surrounded by untreated waste. At the same time, Kenya faces a separate but related crisis. Industrial and household customers burn firewood and charcoal for heat and cooking, driving deforestation and producing toxic smoke that kills tens of thousands of Kenyans every year from respiratory illness.
What is the solution? Sanivation sees the two challenges as one. It collaborates with local governments and water agencies to construct sludge processing facilities that use fecal sludge, along with sawmill and agricultural waste, to produce fuel briquettes. Industries that previously burned firewood can now purchase briquettes from Sanivation. Sludge that would have poisoned groundwater is transformed into a different energy resource. In one process, Sanivation resolves the sanitation crisis, prevents deforestation, reduces air pollution, and helps municipalities manage their waste efficiently.
What is the business model? Sanivation is a circular-economy model with multiple revenue streams. County government and utility agencies in the county compensate Sanivation to construct and operate treatment plants, thereby providing the company with long-term infrastructure contracts. Industrial customers pay for briquettes, and they last 1.5 times longer than regular charcoal, emit one-third as much smoke, and reduce energy costs by 10% to 30%. International funding is provided by donors and impact investors to finance plant construction. The model allows the company to serve low-income communities through public-sector partnerships, while earning revenue from private-sector fuel buyers.
How is it funded? The Founders of Sanivation were Andrew Foote and Emily Woods. According to CB Insights data, this organization has raised $3.8 million to date. Its latest funding round was in January 2026, during which it raised $3.3 million in equity from InfraCo Africa, an affiliate of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and a $500,000 technical assistance fund. Earlier investors include Water Unite Impact, FINCA Ventures, and GrowthAfrica.
Why is it innovative? Most sanitation options either treat it as a cost to public health or focus on a single output, such as fertilizer. What Sanivation did was construct an entire value chain business that links public service to the private market. The company started inside a Kakuma refugee camp, one of the largest refugee settlements in Africa, in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It used the refugee camp to demonstrate that the model could work in resource-poor environments and later adapted it to fit partnerships with Kenyan county governments. Its treatment process technology has been certified by three regulatory bodies in Kenya and the United States, giving municipal and industrial partners confidence in the product's safety.
What is the impact? Based on the company's self-reported figures:
Currently treats over 2,500 tonnes of fecal sludge per year
The Naivasha plant expansion will treat waste equivalent to that generated by 100,000 to 130,000 households
Each city-wide treatment facility is expected to employ up to 50 people
A single facility is projected to offset around 288,000 tonnes of carbon over 10 years through reduced deforestation and avoided emissions
What needs to improve? The main problem faced by Sanivation is government underinvestment in the provision of proper sanitation facilities, and private funds are slow to invest in this sector. Sanivation has successfully implemented its business model in cities for more than 10 years now, but expanding to other Kenyan counties and then to other countries will require significant additional investment beyond the current $3.8 million. As noted earlier, energy production from the waste sector in Kenya is still in its infancy, and Sanivation needs the county government to uphold the contracts it has entered into, industrial clients to continue using its briquettes despite higher prices than traditional fuels, and favorable legislation to set up processing facilities.
Sources:
https://www.cbinsights.com/company/sanivation/financials Kenya: Waste-to-value venture lands equity investment
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