Three African entrepreneurs are working together to improve waste disposal in their countries. Better sanitation and water quality are among the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which were created to improve social conditions in the developing world by 2015. From Washington, reporter William Eagle has the story of three promising innovations.
Their work is timely: The U.N. estimates that more than 5,000 children in Africa and Asia under five die each day of diseases caused by dirty water and poor hygiene. Almost 40 percent of people worldwide lack access to toilets and safe ways of disposing of human waste In Africa alone, that rises to 62 percent.
South African entrepreneur Trevor Mulaudzi was originally a geologist. Today, he and the staff of his company, called The Clean Shop, call themselves by other names: toilet activists, motivators, educators and revolutionaries. They’re also successful businessmen.
One of his goals is to reach the Millennium Development Goals.
“Dirty toilets are hampering [efforts] by government to get sustainable good sanitation,” he says.
Many share the blame. Mulaudzi says students and even public officials who have never learned differently clog toilets with newspapers and other refuse. Some school children use articles of clothing in the absence of toilet paper. They also fail to wash their hands. Then they bring the germs into the classroom and spread many types of diseases. Some teen-age girls drop out of school due to a lack of clean and gender-segregated restrooms.
Mulaudzi’s 300-member staff clean up filthy and unusable facilities and then educate their clients to about the importance of keeping them clean.
The clients then motivate themselves and administrators to keep facilities clean, and the whole sanitation system – from construction to education and maintenance – begins to work successfully.
Mulaudzi and the staff of his group, The Clean Shop, teach students to become what he calls toilet angels, who are willing to learn improved hygiene and sanitation practices:
“We say the state of your toilet reflects the state of your mind,” he says. “So we give children a clean environment and clean toilets so they can stay at school. We teach children how to discard sanitary towels. They are clueless. We [explain to] them where [waste] goes – we say that’s what’s causing little rivulets’ in the [open sewers] in the street.
Sanitation Updates 
SULEMAN BONGO FOUNDATION IS A NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION IN GHANA.
PROMOTING GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION AND WATER IS ONE OF OUR MAIN AIMS. WE WANT TO UNDERTAKE A NATIONWIDE WATER,SANITATION AND HYGIENE CAMPAIGN THROUGHOUT THE COMMUNITIES AND SCHOOLS,TO EDUCATE THEM ON HYGIENE,SANITATION AND WATER.IT IS A VERY EXPENSIVE PROJECT TO UNDERTAKE.HOW CAN WE BE ASSISTED.
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