SHF Annual Report 2025: Making Sanitation and Menstrual Health Markets Work

The SHF Annual Report 2025 highlights how SHF continued to work with governments and partners to build stronger, more self-sustaining and investable sanitation economies and menstrual health markets. As the organisation prepares for its next strategic phase, the report presents progress in expanding access, mobilising finance, supporting enterprise growth and advancing policy and market reform.

In 2025, SHF programmes helped nearly 240,000 people gain access to basic sanitation and more than 62,000 gain access to safely managed sanitation. SHF’s work also helped mobilise USD 6.7 million in private investment and financing. Public investment supported through SHF technical assistance and policy engagement reached USD 2.4 million.

“The results presented in this report show that SHF’s approach is delivering practical progress,” SHF Board Chair Cecilia Akintomide notes in the foreword. “As SHF prepares for its second strategic phase, the Board’s priority is to ensure that the organisation enters its next strategic phase with the governance, capabilities, partnerships and operating model required to deliver impact at scale.”

The report highlights advances in national systems and enterprise development. In Uganda, nearly 2,500 sanitation enterprises across seven districts received support, generating close to 5,300 jobs, including more than 800 held by women. Across Kenya and Uganda, SanUp, SHF’s sanitation enterprise accelerator, supported 15 enterprises and nearly 700 jobs while helping participating businesses improve their investment readiness.

Through its Next Generation Sanitation (NGS) interventions, SHF supported reforms designed to strengthen climate-resilient, non-sewered sanitation systems. This included work to integrate non-sewered sanitation into Kenya’s National Building Code and the piloting of the SHF-developed Sanitation Market Maturity Assessment Tool (SANEMAT) in Kenya and Uganda. The tool helps identify market constraints and guide policy, technical assistance and investment. Kenya’s Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation endorsed the findings, while the Government of Uganda decided to institutionalise SANEMAT as a formal mechanism for market assessment and sector planning.

In Nigeria, SHF supported national policy processes and advanced local-currency financing pathways for sanitation and menstrual health.

Capital M, SHF’s market-led moonshot for menstrual health, advanced menstrual health within trade, regulatory and investment systems. Progress included broader participation by low- and middle-income countries in the development of international menstrual product standards, engagement through the World Trade Organization on clearer global customs classifications for menstrual products, and country-level market reforms.

Capital M also strengthened market intelligence and selected 14 enterprises across East Africa for support through M Ventures, its menstrual health enterprise accelerator.

“This is the essence of SHF’s catalytic role: not to replace national systems or markets, but to help them work better,” SHF Executive Director Dominic O’Neill writes in his opening message.

“The progress recorded in 2025 gives us a strong foundation,” he adds. “Our task now is to carry this momentum into SHF 2.0 and help more countries build markets that deliver dignity, health, resilience and opportunity at scale.”

The report positions these results as an important foundation for SHF’s next phase. Under SHF 2.0, the organisation will sharpen its catalytic role, helping countries address barriers to market growth, develop inclusive private-sector models and mobilise greater domestic, blended and commercial finance for sanitation and menstrual health.

Read the SHF Annual Report 2025.