Batten's Lipscomb Helps Break Up Senegal's "Toilet Cartel"

Editor’s note: This complete National Public Radio story can be read and heard here; this excerpt is posted with permission. (A transcript of the radio report is here.) The podcast version of a longer report (24 minutes) can be heard and downloaded here.

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In Dakar, Senegal, people can’t just flush their poop away; most people rely on septic tanks that must be emptied.

Molly Lipscomb is an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Batten. This project was done in collaboration with a team of other researchers from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and with Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization focused on using data to solve problems related to poverty.

A giant vacuum truck—called a “toilet sucker”—can come to your house, remove the waste and take the sewage to a treatment center.

Molly Lipscomb knew they had to find a way to get the truckers to start trying to beat each other on price. The truckers all have cellphones, so Lipscomb wondered whether she could set up a system where people could order one of the trucks by text message.