Stakeholder Interests

Stakeholders have very different interests with respect to sanitation and water issues. In particular, stakeholders from different levels will have various motives and expectations to a certain project. The specific interests of all types of stakeholders may be difficult to define, especially if they are "hidden", or in contradiction with the openly stated aims of the organisations or groups involved. Interests may be drawn out by asking:

• What are the stakeholder's expectations of the project?
• What benefits are there likely to be for the stakeholders?
• What resources will the stakeholder wish to commit (or avoid committing) to the project?
• What other interests does the stakeholder have which may conflict with the project?
• How does the stakeholder regard other stakeholders? (ODA 1995)

Discussing stakeholders’ expectations, interests and benefits and their concerns or the negative impact an initiative can have on them, respectively, is important for the following reasons:

• To understand stakeholders perception and their point of view
• To avoid forgetting important aspects of involved stakeholders during the planning of SSWM
• To better adjust an initiative regarding stakeholders interests
• To avoid implementation failures and to avoid disregarding the needs and desires of stakeholders
•  To focus the planning and implementation right from the start on the needs of stakeholders
• To direct the initiative in the right directive.

There are several possibilities to discuss stakeholders’ interest. The method chosen depends on how former steps of stakeholder analysis were discussed and what kind of overviews for stakeholders identification and stakeholders importance and influence were chosen.

If one has structured the stakeholders as an open map, it is possible to add information about their interest in another colour on the same map (see also Venn diagrams).

Another way to identify interests is to list all stakeholders in a table and add the relevant information.

If a qualitative analysis has already been done in order to find out more about importance and influence, one can simply add more rows to the already existing table to include more information about the stakeholders. See also stakeholders identification.

What kind of information one would like to have for planning of SSWM strongly depends on the context of an initiative. Sometimes, it might be enough to know something about the general role of the different stakeholders at this stage, and sometimes it is worthwhile to gather and discuss further aspects such as stakeholders’ importance and influence or even other aspects which can help to optimise the planning process and to avoid implementation failures at this early stage.

How detailed of an analysis is needed should be decided in the context of the certain project. It also strongly depends on the available timeframe for an initiative.

<----- Go back to Step 2: stakeholder importance and influence

Continue with analysing -----> Step 4: stakeholder strategy plan 

Or see also:

-----> Step 1: Stakeholder identification