Motives of water and sanitation entrepreneurs in South Africa

Abstract

The study aims to understand what motivates water and sanitation social entrepreneurs(SEs) in South Africa as they navigate the complex business environment of collaborating with municipalities in undertaking public service delivery. In an attempt to achieve higher sustainability in their SE business models, SE processes become risky and inevitably involve higher complexity as SE businessmodel designers seek to also understand their business impact on the whole ecosystem. Any impact on any of the water and sanitation subsystems can stress or compromise the stability of the whole system.As such, in-depth face-to-face semi-structured interview was conducted with purposively selected social entrepreneurs in South Africa‘s Gauteng and Western Cape provinces. The study finds that SEs are motivated by compassion, religious, problem solving motives as well as the desire for self-sufficiency for sustainable business operation so as to make impact at scale. The overall mission is to change human living environments and provide sustainable alternative public services.