Addressing Water and Sanitation in Africa

After discussing some solutions to the sanitation problem in my previous blog posts , let's go back to Kampala and analyse whether the sanitation problem has improved or not for the rest of Africa (thank you to Richard Taylor for this blog suggestion!) When there's lots of data, we struggle to pick out what's important and therefore we end up not really understanding the situation at all. This is where the study undergone by Hopewell and Graham comes into play. They outline the sanitation situation in 31 cities in Africa using data from DHS over a 12 year period from 2000 to 2012. The data was compiled into beautifully presented graphs - yay.  I will aim to present three of the four factors affecting trends in access to water supply and sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). I will use this study to compare the sanitation situation to Kampala.  Understanding the graphs : The coloured oval represents the annual rate of change measured in percentage points positive - green

In the previous blog post, we outlined some issues with urbanisation for sanitation infrastructures in slum settlements in Africa. This brings us to outlining some solutions that could help improve water and sanitation in Africa. One example which will be discussed in detail will be Sanergy, a market-based approach and will be discussed in the context of Nairobi - the capital city of Kenya. Sanergy addresses the entire sanitation value chain (shown in figure 1) which will be discussed further within this blog post to give you an insight on the advantages (profitability and sustainability) of this method for water and sanitation in Nairobi. Figure 1 Three graduates from MIT wondered whether they could do more than the governments for water and sanitation so they set off on their journey of improving sanitation in Nairobi. So what makes Sanergy unique and effective? They use a sanitation value chain , which is both profitable and sustainable for water and sanitation in Nairobi, Kenya. A

The rapid urbanisation with many African cities comes with a consequence: rapid population growth which can lead to strained sanitation infrastructures.  Population growth alongside Climate Change is expected to affect low-income countries, especially those in Africa the most.  Drangert et al suggest a hypothetical relationship between population increase and infrastructure to explore how infrastructure behaves through different demographic stages as shown in Figure 1.  At A-B there is slow infrastructure development as there is little population growth and therefore demand of sanitation services could be met by own- key arrangements which are activities that are ‘managed and controlled by local communities’. There is little incentive for governments to invest in sanitation infrastructures at this stage. However, the lack of investment is an issue at C-D where often there is no or deteriorating infrastructure at a point where population rapidly increases. Here, existing infrastru

  'The climate crisis is a water crisis'  A goal set for COP26 is to  work together to deliver and this will be the central idea for today's blog post. Population growth, urbanisation, climate change and governance issues are all reasons why much of the SSA population still lack access to clean water. In the following blog post, I will aim to highlight how governance plays a large role in why Africa may be behind in terms of water and sanitation than the rest of the World.  Why is reaching sustainability for water and sanitation difficult for Africa? There are more actors involved with the development of water and sanitation in SSA compared to the rest of the world. In SSA it is not just the private and public sectors who are involved with decisions concerning safe water but also NGOs, civil society, and international donors.  The facilities in SSA are more diverse including improved facilities like flushed toilets but also unimproved facilities such as hanging latrines an

Meeting the SDG 6 mentioned in my previous blog post , may be a challenge for countries in Africa. Challenges faced by Kampala, the capital city of Uganda will be the focus of this blogpost. W ater supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions in these environments are often unimproved due to regulation issues, low budgets and lack of capacity . Therefore, I will aim to explain the how pit latrines work, then depict the challenges present with them and finally propose ideas and suggestions on how to combat the challenges present.  Approximately 90% of households in Kampala use on-site sanitation facilities and primarily pit latrines. However, Kampala is not alone as many low-income countries chose pit latrines as their most common disposal of faecal waste in aims to reach targets of SDG 6. Graham and Polizzotto suggest that 1.77 billion people use pit latrines as a primary means of sanitation. How do pit latrines work? Excreta falls into a hole in the ground. Then, through bacter