Addressing Water and Sanitation in Africa

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, Keny...

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, exis...