WSA signs up with Malaysian firm for technical support on sanitation

Water Sanitation for Africa (WSA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysian firm Indah Water Konsortium Sdn Bhd for technical know-how and consultancy services in sewerage management in African countries.

WSA selected Indah Water “to be in a technical committee formed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to propose immediate, medium- and long-term solutions for sanitation services in WSA member countries”. In 2011-2012 WSA received three Gates Foundation grants totalling US$ 7.2 million, one of which to develop sanitation financing models for urban poor and another to set an African Sanitation Think Tank.

Chief Executive Officer Datuk Abdul Kadir Mohd Din said that the Gates Foundation “had sent a team of wastewater experts from the United States to visit Indah Water after visiting the African continent and Asean countries”.

Indah Water is Malaysia’s national sewerage company. In 1994, the Federal Government awarded the company the concession for nationwide sewerage services which before were the responsibility of local authorities.

Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA) is a Pan African Inter-governmental Agency based in Burkina Faso, previously known as the African Regional Centre for Water and Sanitation (CREPA). WSA has a presence in 32 African countries.

Source: Bernama, 16 May 2013

Sanitation as a business – the poor will have to wait

Malawian sanitation entrepreneur Martius using “The Gulper” to empty a pit latrine. Photo: Water for People

Providing toilets to the poorest may be “dear to the hearts of many non-profits, aid agencies and governments” but if you want to involve business you have to start with the better-off families first. So says business woman and sanitation entrepreneur Towera Jalakari who runs a pit emptying service in Blantyre, Malawi.

“We will get to Everyone in Blantyre one day, but the only way to make sure Blantyre actually solves its sanitation problems is to recognize that the market must function.  [...]  As we get better, as we scale city-wide, then costs will come down, services will improve, and pressure will build for all people to have a toilet.  We will get to the poorest, but they are not our first targets.  [...] If we rush too fast [...] then the poor will not have lasting services but rather a lot of useless toilets and nowhere to go to the bathroom.”

Malawi is one the countries in Water for People’s Sanitation as a Business program (2010-2014), which is funded by a US$ 5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Water for People has contracted Tools for Enterprise & Education Consultants (TEECs) to support pit emptying businesses in Lilongwe and Blantyre.

Getting communities engaged in water and sanitation projects: participatory design and consumer feedback

Community engagement in water and sanitation service delivery is key for ensuring project sustainability and accountability.

This Topic Brief looks at community engagement approaches used by WSUP in three cities within the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme: Antananarivo (Madagascar), Kumasi (Ghana) and Maputo (Mozambique).

Click on the image above to download the Topic Brief

The specific focus is on ways to encourage community involvement in the design of water supply and sanitation projects, and ways in which service providers can elicit input and feedback from people living in low-income communities.

The Topic Brief discusses several cases in which community engagement has positively contributed to the development of WASH services. It highlights some of the key challenges currently faced by WSUP and other sector organisations, and ends with practical recommendations for programme managers about how to engage low-income communities.

WaterAid – Keeping promises: why African leaders need now to deliver on their past water and sanitation commitments

210 million more Africans lack access to sanitation than in 1990 | Source: WaterAid-Feb 18, 2013

African Governments are failing to keep their funding promises on sanitation, a new WaterAid report has revealed. The report warns that unless investment is increased, the challenges of urbanisation, climate change and most critically population growth risk turning the clock back on sanitation access even further(1).

Kroo Bay slum in Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2012, during the worst cholera outbreak in nearly 15 years. Credit: Tommy Trenchard

From 1990 to 2010, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 340 million, however only 130 million people secured access to sanitation over the same period(2). In total nearly 600 million Sub-Saharan Africans – 70% of the population – are without access to a safe toilet(3).

The Keeping promises: why African leaders need now to deliver on their past water and sanitation commitments report uses official Government figures from five African Governments – Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Uganda – to show that funding on sanitation is falling short of government commitments across the continent.

Dealing with land tenure and tenancy challenges in water and sanitation services delivery

Providing water and sanitation services to the urban poor often takes place in contexts with complex formal and informal land ownership arrangements. Firstly, the people in most need of improved water and sanitation are often tenants, and this raises diverse challenges: for example, landlords may be unwilling to invest in better toilets. Secondly, improving water and sanitation services often requires land for construction of communal or public facilities, and land tenure again raises diverse problems here.

How can these challenges be overcome? Drawing on WSUP’s experience in the African Cities for the Future (ACF) programme, this Topic Brief gives an overview of this area, and discusses possible solutions. The Topic Brief also offers practical guidance for programme managers.

This Topic Brief is the first in a series of four, documenting learning from the ACF programme. Watch out for the following titles, which will be released over the coming weeks:

• Getting communities engaged in water and sanitation projects:
  participatory design and consumer feedback
• Designing effective contracts for small-scale service providers in urban water and sanitation
• Hybrid management models: blending community and private management

To view all WSUP’s publications, visit www.wsup.com/sharing.

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: Burera District, Rwanda

Sanitation and Hygiene Policy – Stated Beliefs and Actual Practice: A Case Study in the Burera District, Rwanda, 2012.

• Link to full text, (pdf)

Nelson Ekane, Madeleine Fogde, Marianne Kjellén and Stacey Noel. Stockholm Environment Institute.

In Rwanda, sanitation and hygiene are high on the government’s development agenda, and it prescribes a range of guidelines and standards for toilet technologies appropriate for different regions. This working paper presents these prescribed guidelines and standards, specifically those pertaining specifically to urine diversion dry toilets (UDDTs), as well as those on the use of treated human excreta as fertilizer, and on pit latrines (“drop and store”). It then describes how these guidelines and standards are enforced at the community level – specifically in the Rugarama sector, Burera District – and presents the prevailing sanitation and hygiene norms and practices, moving on to discuss how and why the prescribed guidelines and standards match or do not match prevailing practices. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Rwanda is carrying out a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the dostrict of Burera and three other districts in the country.

This study shows that health, hygiene, convenience, and safety aspects of sanitation in the study area remain unsatisfactory, and are not aligned with national guidelines and standards. Most of the toilets in these communities are neither properly constructed nor properly used. Reasons for the contradictions between prevailing practice and national guidelines and standards include the following: people do not place a high priority on toilets; financial constraints limit household investment in toilets; there is a lack of proper understanding of prescribed sanitation and hygiene guidelines and standards; and there are challenges in carrying out sanitary inspections. For the productive sanitation system in particular, poor understanding of how the system works was identified as the main cause of the mismatch between standards and practice. This study posits that a common understanding of prescribed guidelines and standards at all levels of society is vital to ensure health and safety, improved livelihoods, and to maintain minimum hygiene and sanitation standards.

Africa: AMCOW gets US$ 2 million Gates grant to build national sanitation capacities

The African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) has been awarded a US$ 2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help countries build capacities for sanitation policy development, monitoring and advocacy.

AMCOW will use the 3-year grant for:

• technical guidance and training to four fragile counties to develop and adopt national sanitation and hygiene policies and plans
• organising the 4th AfricaSan conference and awards to boost implementation of the AfricaSan Action Plan and eThekwini ministerial commitments
• country support in using the African mechanism for water and sanitation monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

“Across the globe, about 2.6 billion do not have access to safe sanitation. Africa accounts for almost 40 percent of these figures.” said Bai Mass Taal, AMCOW Executive Secretary.

AMCOW is an initiative of African Ministers responsible for water and a Specialized Technical Committee on water and sanitation for the African Union.

In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched its Reinvent the Toilet initiative at AfricaSan 3 in Kigali, Rwanda.

Source: AMCOW, 18 Dec 2012

36th WEDC International Conference, July 1-5, 2013, Nakuru, Kenya

Delivering Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Services in an Uncertain Environment

• Dates: 1-5 July 2013,
• Location: co-hosted at Egerton University, Nakuru, Kenya

CALL FOR PAPERS AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS

The WEDC International Conference is a comprehensive learning event, which provides continued professional development for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector professionals. 

A three-day conference programme initially facilitates the sharing of current knowledge and experiences, through presentations and debate of peer-reviewed content.

This is followed by a two-day capacity development programme, comprising quality-assured workshops designed to develop skills and knowledge in hot topic areas, which have been jointly identified with sector stakeholders.

For full details visit: http://www.wedcconference.co.uk

Download the Call for Papers here:
http://www.wedcconference.co.uk/docs/36th_Conference_Call.pdf

Submit your paper or poster through My WEDC.
https://wedc-knowledge.lboro.ac.uk/

IFC Announces Partnership to Increase Access to Affordable Sanitation in East Africa

Nairobi, Kenya, December 18, 2012—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, today announced support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to catalyze the market for improved sanitation and accelerate access to more affordable sanitation solutions for low-income households in East Africa.

The Selling Sanitation initiative, a joint project of IFC and the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, will support regional manufacturing firms to deliver low-cost sanitation products to consumer markets, with a pilot program in Kenya.

This initiative will lower market barriers, attract private investment and spur innovation by helping firms better understand consumer needs at the base of the pyramid. It will provide support to manufacturing firms to design new products, strengthen rural distribution mechanisms, and actively promote sanitation to consumers currently without access. The initiative will work closely with regional government counterparts, including the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, to create the right enabling conditions for the sanitation market.

UNICEF – Community case management of diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia

Community case management of diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia: Tracking science to policy and practice in sub-Saharan Africa, 2012.

• Full text, pdf

UNICEF

Community case management (CCM) increases access to treatment to those beyond the reach of health facilities and has the potential to more equitably address the three largest causes of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia.

Based on data from UNICEF country offices, we provide a profile of government policies and implementation of CCM diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria for sick children aged 2 months-5 years across sub-Saharan Africa in 2010. This offers an aggregated analysis and disaggregated tables for subSaharan Africa and where possible we explain the status of outliers based on correspondence with UNICEF country offices. We also compare our findings with previous data collected by Countdown 2015 to describe trends in CCM pneumonia policy and implementation for sub-Saharan Africa. The following bullet points represent key findings.

• The majority of governments in sub-Saharan Africa have policies supporting CCM of diarrhea, malaria or pneumonia, yet important exceptions remain. Moreover, even when supportive CCM policies exist, CCM programs are not always implemented, and far fewer are implemented at scale.
• Even as CCM pneumonia lags the furthest behind, significant change has occurred. The number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa with supportive CCM pneumonia policies has more than doubled since 2005.