How it all began
Ten years ago, the stench of the Nairobi public toilets could be smelt 100 to 200 meters away. The then city council (County Government) was doing a poor job managing the loos to the extent that they were being run by street urchin.
So when everybody smelt the filth and turned away, David so a problem that needed solving.
He posed the question, “is it possible to have proper sanitation within our cities?”
At the time, the local government act of the old constitution gave provision of sanitation to the local governments. So a private company stepping in to provide this service was unheard off. And as one can only imagine, the officials at the council were apprehensive to change.
But as the old adage goes, “there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”It was David’s time to shine.
The toilets had to be self sustainable, so they had to be of more service to the community, this was done by setting up kiosks and shoe polishing booth.
To fund the dream toilets, David visited nine Kenyan banks and they all turned him down. He lacked the normal banking requirements to guarantee the risk of the venture failing.
“To us, the security was the good will for this social venture ,”he says, the banks disagreed.
With the banks out of the question, David and his cofounder Doctor Nganga contributed to set up the first the first toilet and later got financed by good will.
The first Iko Toilet cost 3 million
They finally applied for a million dollar loan which they managed to get and used the capital to expand throughout the country.
There are currently 65 Iko Toilets throughout the country.