Turning poo into profit? The troubled politics of a biogas-based sanitation business model in Mozambique

Business models based on resource recovery and reuse (RRR) are presented by various actors as innovative and promising solutions to sanitation problems in development contexts. This article suggests that these models must be seen instead as a contemporary neoliberal approach to sanitation development, shaped by the RRR ‘waste regime’. Under this regime, (human) waste is not only revalued as a renewable resource rather than disposable dirt, but simultaneously treated as a potential commodity. The idea of poo as a potential resource and profitable commodity has given rise to the main promise of sanitation business models in development: long-term sustainability of sanitation facilities, based on cost-recovery or commercial viability through market-led innovation and entrepreneurship by the poor. I critically examine this promise for a sanitation business model piloted in two towns in Mozambique. This model sought to ‘turn poo into profit’ through the production and commercial use of biogas, extracted out of human and other types of waste using anaerobic digestion. The study, based on interviews and documentary analysis, finds that an exclusionary and contested ‘politics of poo’ underpinned the process of developing this model. The persistent, but increasingly fruitless pursuit of rendering the model commercially viable heavily divided the actors who were closely involved in the process, rendering the pilot contested. Actors who should have been closely involved, i.e. targeted people and the Mozambican public agency responsible for sanitation in the towns, were largely excluded in the process as they were not familiar with, or interested in, the ideas and market discourses specific to sanitation business models. The article concludes that those propagating sanitation business models based on biogas need to come to grips with the likelihood that poo may perhaps not have a golden future in development.