About SaniTap.
Building scalable climate and water solutions that deliver measurable environmental impact and lasting benefits for vulnerable communities.
Who is SaniTap.
SaniTap is a mission-driven impact venture that develops scalable solutions to climate, water, and public health challenges in vulnerable communities in Madagascar and beyond.
Founded by two social entrepreneurs with over 60 years of combined experience, the business combines practical implementation expertise with results-based financing models to deliver projects that protect the environment while improving livelihoods. Our work focuses on climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and building long-term resilience, particularly through water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and carbon-financed climate projects.
By combining technology, rigorous project development, and financially-sustainable business models, SaniTap delivers initiatives that improve access to safe drinking water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen community resilience to climate change.
What being an Impact Business means.
Being an impact-first business means we only do work that delivers real social and environmental impact, and pays for itself. Profit here is not the point; it is what lets a good idea scale. Other names for the same posture, triple-bottom-line, triple-P (Profit, People, Planet), all say the same thing.
We apply commercial tools, innovation, R&D, scalable financing, to problems traditionally left to governments and charities. Every activity is measured and reported so the impact is verifiable and the model keeps improving.
Meet the team.
SaniTap is led by an experienced team of social entrepreneurs and climate practitioners with decades of combined experience in water, sanitation, climate finance, and international development.
The organisation's co-founders are dedicated impact venture entrepreneurs with decades of experience in renewable energy, drinking water, humanitarian work, and business consulting. They bring deep operational expertise, having built and scaled multiple impact ventures across Africa in improved cooking, sustainable biomass fuel, solar energy, and drinking water, work that has positively impacted millions of people.
Andrew Tanswell
Heads governance, finance and strategy. UK national, proven business leader, management consultant, and award-winning social entrepreneur. Leads the business.
Adriaan Mol
Heads innovation and operations. Dutch national based in Madagascar. Award-winning social entrepreneur. Adriaan has delivered improved drinking water and sanitation to over 1.4 million people.
Volatiana Tombotsiory
National Engagement & MadAvance Director. Leads engagement with Malagasy national authorities, community partners and local stakeholders, and heads the MadAvance team delivering SaniTap's projects on the ground.
Jan de Graaf
Head of operations in Madagascar. Ensures programme delivery, monitoring, and community engagement across water-point restoration, clean-cooking distribution and new projects.
James Walker
Leads SaniTap's carbon programmes. Runs methodology alignment, MRV design, and the pathway from project registration through third-party verification to credit issuance. Leads our CORSIA programme.
Building Malagasy institutions that scale climate impact.
SaniTap's work rests on deep collaboration with local communities and on building the Malagasy NGOs and social enterprises that deliver the work at scale. MadAvance and Endur'O are the two we have founded and funded to date. Each is a Malagasy organisation with its own governance, its own local staff, and its own institutional trajectory. The result is local capacity that grows past what any single SaniTap project could reach, and leverages every subsequent one.
MadAvance
The community delivery partner.
In 2023 SaniTap supported and funded MadAvance, a Malagasy NGO that leads community engagement, WASH promotion and long-term management of SaniTap's water and clean-cooking programmes. MadAvance has its own Board of Directors of capable Malagasy professionals.
MadAvance implements the projects on the ground, restoring hand pumps and community water points, distributing improved cookstoves, running hygiene and gender-promotion programmes, and providing the ongoing preventive maintenance that keeps water systems working. MadAvance employs over 80 local staff across field operations, project management, community engagement and monitoring.
By working through a strong local Malagasy partner, SaniTap ensures projects generate not only environmental impact but also sustainable local employment and skills development in the communities they serve.
Endur'O
The piped-water operator.
Endur'O is a joint venture between SaniTap and NatuRano that operates piped water systems across Madagascar as a professional water utility. It complements MadAvance's community-based delivery with the engineering and metering discipline that piped supply requires.
Endur'O runs 138 piped water systems today, 134 in the South and 4 peri-urban systems in Alaotra-Mangoro east of Antananarivo, reaching over 146,000 people. Every system uses in-house prepaid NFC Smart Tap technology: cashless, metered per litre, with mobile-money top-up through a network of franchised shopkeepers and a real-time dashboard.
Every rehabilitation follows the same design brief: solar-powered boreholes to replace failing springs, on-site chlorination, and smart metering as standard. Water sales fund around 90% of operating costs; carbon credits fund the rest, so repair and maintenance are never optional. Endur'O employs 34 people directly, with a further ~138 shopkeeper agents coming online, and is on a path to 500 piped systems reaching 500,000+ people. The Ministry of Water has also agreed operating rights for an initial number of public water kiosks in Antananarivo as a pilot project, with potential to grow to a pipeline of ~250 kiosks reaching a further ~250,000 people if the pre-pilot is successful.
Working with the national, regional and local authorities.
SaniTap works in collaboration with the Government of Madagascar and its line ministries at national level, with regional and local authorities in each region we work in, and with communes and fokontany at the closest level to the households the programme reaches. This is how we understand the needs on the ground, deploy resources where they matter most, and scale the impact of each project.
Government of Madagascar and line ministries.
Our national-level engagement runs through the Government of Madagascar and its line ministries: the Ministry of Water, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, and the Designated National Authority for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. These are the authorities that approve carbon-programme registration, authorise credits for international transfer, and coordinate the national NDC accounting. SaniTap holds a Letter of Approbation from the Government of Madagascar for its Gold Standard programme, and is on the pathway to formal Article 6 corresponding-adjustment authorisation for CORSIA-eligible credits.
Volatiana Tombotsiory, our National Engagement Director, leads this relationship day to day.
Anosy, and the fokontany level.
Our regional engagement runs through elected and appointed authorities in each region we work in. In Anosy, our largest region of operations, we work closely with the regional administration and Governor on the deployment of water and clean-cooking programmes. Below the region we consult at the commune level, and below that at the fokontany level, the smallest administrative unit and the one that is closest to the households the programme actually reaches.
Consultation is a process, not a single event.
Every SaniTap project runs a documented stakeholder-consultation process with the communities it serves. The consent standard we apply is Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
- Community meetings before design freeze. Households, women's groups and community leaders shape the project before technical decisions are locked in.
- Joint planning with local authorities. Commune and fokontany officials co-plan deployment, siting and monitoring.
- Ongoing engagement through delivery. The consultation continues through installation, training and monitoring, not just at design.
- An open grievance channel. Any household can raise a concern at any point across the ten-plus year crediting period, and every case is logged and responded to.
Read the full FPIC article Consultation documents and feedback →
The way we work.
At SaniTap, we take pride in being a responsible company that operates with the highest standards of ethics, integrity, and respect for all individuals. Our Code of Conduct and Ethics Policies are designed to guide our employees, stakeholders, and partners in making ethical decisions and conducting themselves in a manner that reflects our core values.
Get in touch.
Talk to SaniTap about partnership, carbon credit purchase, or advisory work.