SaniFaso: a learning sanitation project in Burkina Faso

The SaniFaso project aims to eradicate open defecation in 12 partnering communes (the lowest level of administrative division) in Burkina Faso.

The four-year rural sanitation project, which started in December 2010, will  construct 16,000 latrines, train local masons and carry out hygiene promotion campaigns.

The European Commission is co-funding this 3 million Euro project. The implementing agencies are the French NGO Eau-Vive, in association with WaterAid Burkina Faso, Helvetas, GIZ/PEA and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

During AfricaSan 3 conference in July 2011, SaniFaso released a project video explaining why and how it is a learning project.

For more about SaniFaso see

• an article IRC’s role in the project at www.irc.nl/page/62023
• a Powerpoint presentation and a project profile (both in French)

South Sudan: Community Led Total Sanitation project in Lologo South

In September 2010, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded, Management Sciences for Health (MSH)-led Sudan Health Transformation Project, Phase 2 (SHTP II) piloted a 3-month Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project to determine the most effective strategies to increase sanitary defecation methods in Southern Sudan. CLTS motivates or “triggers” communities’ desire for change and influences them to create “open defecation –free” sites, through the construction and utilization of latrines.

In Lologo South, a residential community just south of Juba, thousands of new houses, fences, and animal carrels are in various states of construction.  And importantly, thanks to MSH, there are also latrines.

Read more

Source: Mary Burket, Management Sciences for Health / allAfrica.com, 5 July 2011

The Toilet Named Nigeria

In his latest column, government critic and Professor of Creative Writing at Trinity College (USA) Okey Ndibe, voices his disgust at the practice of open defecation in his homeland Nigeria.

If you want to gauge how badly Nigerians have been animalized, then pay attention to how, and where, many of them defecate. Just recently, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that 33 million Nigerians have no access to decent toilets. As a consequence, said the report, these citizens of Africa’s most populous nation answer the call of nature in the open.

Is it really only 33 million Nigerians? One is afraid that here’s one occasion when statisticians have pegged the figure too low. Nigeria – as I wrote three years ago – may be described as one vast toilet. Anybody who has traveled from Lagos to Onitsha by road knows that there isn’t one single rest area with toilet facilities along the route. At stops in Ore or Benin City, pressed passengers must hurry off into the brushes, gingerly skating around others’ feces, in order to relieve themselves.

Nigeria: Agency launches sanitation project in three Katsina Local Government Areas

The Katsina State Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) has launched a project for the actualization of 100 percent sanitation, water and hygiene coverage in three selected local government areas of the state by the year 2014.

The project, funded by the United Kingdom’s department for international development (DFID) under the sanitation, water and hygiene in Nigeria (SHAWN) is to focus on communities in Bakori, Kaita and Mai’adua local government areas of the state.

In an address during a capacity building workshop for sanitation departments of the selected councils, the executive director of RUWASSA, Abubakar Mamman Gege said the project was aimed at ensuring total sanitation, personal and household hygiene with emphasis on the eradication of open defecation. The director who was represented by the agency’s secretary, Hamisu Musa Abubakar also disclosed other areas of encouragement included hand washing with soap and water as well as the provision of adequate and portable drinking water in all the communities.

The agency also trained the communities in the preventive maintenance of hand pumps as well as formation of water, sanitation and hygiene committees (WASHCOMS) to enable them maintain their sanitation facilities.

Source: Lawal Ibrahim, Daily Trust / allAfrica.com, 9 December 2010

Nigeria: 425 communities ‘open defecation free’

No fewer than 425 communities have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) in the country, the Chairman, sub-technical Committee on Water Supply and Quality Control, Mr Usang Bassey, said in Jos, the Plateau state capital.

Bassey told the National Technical Committee on Water Resources meeting in Jos, that the declaration was a result of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CTLS) programme being implemented in the country.

He said CLTS was gaining acceptability among the implementers adding that 30 states were implementing the programme.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the programme was introduced by WaterAid in some communities in Benue state and it had achieved considerable success.

The programme focuses mainly on achieving sustainable behavioural change through motivation and mobilisation of communities to understand the risks associated with open defecation.

According to Bassey, more than 2,654 communities are presently implementing the CLTS and 425 communities have been declared ODF.

“There is an increase in CLTS coverage from 1,887 communities and 299 ODF communities in December 2009 to 2,654 communities and 425 ODF communities in June 2010.

“The National Task Group on Sanitation has carried our monitoring and verification visits to 84 communities in 28 states that have attained the status,’’ he said.

Bassey said the monitoring and verification exercise revealed that CLTS had been adopted in 25 states out of the 28 states visited and was contributing greatly to scaling up building of latrines in the rural areas.

He said there were a lot of successes on CLTS implementation which could help further improve the situation, but were not being captured.

“There are variations in the type of CLTS being implemented across the country and a big gap between triggered communities and the number that have achieved ODF,’’ Bassey said.

He said sanitation should be treated as a priority in its own right and not as an add-on to more attractive water supply programmes.

“CLTS is being adopted as one of the sustainable approaches to attain the MDGs within the sanitation sub-sector.

“An annual national roundtable on CLTS has been instituted and Katsina state is expected to host in 2011,’’ he added.

Source: People’s Daily, 10 November 2010

Nigeria: Minister flays low sanitation coverage

Minister of Water Resources, Chief Obadia Ando, has expressed dissatisfaction with the average sanitation coverage in Nigeria which, he said, is still as low as 45 percent.

Ando said in an address at the 2nd National Round Table Conference on Community-Led Total Sanitation yesterday in Calabar , that most communities in Nigeria are yet to have access to safe means of human waste disposal.

He disclosed that from the baseline survey conducted by the Ministry in 2007, the average sanitation coverage is still as low as 45 per cent, while that of the rural sanitation is about 35 per cent.

Uganda: Project uses sports, school visits to promote health

A new campaign to enhance empowerment of local people to demand and promote sanitation in the eastern and northern districts has been launched. The initiative by Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (Wash)United- Uganda is seeking to increase latrine coverage and empower the local people to demand for easy access to safe water because it is their right. Working in four districts of Kibuku in the east, Gulu and Lira in the north as well as Kampala in the central, the project is aimed at averting diseases resulting from improper disposal of human waste and lack of safe water. “People have been very reluctant and little or no attention was put on hygiene, water and sanitation. People could go to latrines that have no hand washing facilities like a small jerrycan and soap while many others did not know the importance and application of the hygiene facilities,” says Francis Opande, the project coordinator, Kibuku Youth Wash Association said.

He says other people do not have toilets and are using polythene bags in their houses which they throw in the wee hours of the night on the road side, dust bins, bushes while others dump them in the neighbourhood. Opande says the campaign started in primary schools as first priority because most of the schools do not have washing facilities; “But also school children can easily spread the message of hygiene to their homes.”Wash United uses football-based games to educate children about the importance of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene and facilitate behaviour change.
“World Toilet Cup is a WASH United trademark game that allows both children and adults to approach the touchy issue of sanitation in a fun way. Through the game, participants learn about the crucial importance of sanitation for health, safety, the environment, prosperity and dignity,” says Opande.

“Participants make an effort to tackle the sanitation crisis by kicking as many brown “poo-balls” as possible where they belong – into toilets and latrines. Players who aim particularly well can win a Wash United team shirt.” says Ms Annet Tamale, an activist with Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (Uwasnet), the project coordinators. She argues that washing hands with only water is not good enough because one needs a good scrub with water and soap if they want to get rid of all the germs.

Source: Juliet Kigongo, Daily Monitor, 12 August 2010

Ghana: No toilet facilities for Pong-Tamale Senior High School

Students of Pong-Tamale Senior High School (PONTASS) in the Northern Region are making do with free-range (open defecation) because of lack of toilet facilities at the school.

Most of the over 800 students have deserted the only toilet in the school which is near the boys’ dormitory because it is but a harvest of maggots. What is curious is the fact that the school authorities are aware that particular toilet cannot meet the demands of the student population.

The female students are even worse-off, because there is an uncompleted female toilet facility which has been abandoned since 2005. The facility is now a den of snakes and other predators. Students have, on several occasions, reported snake bites and scorpion stings while patronising the free-range or walking towards their dormitories.

The situation becomes very unbearable especially during the rainy season, as students try to evade notorious flies, as well as, device tactics to locate safe grounds to squat and do their own thing in an already messy one.

The school, established in 1991, is one of the two second cycle institutions in the Savelugu-Nanton District of the Northern Region. However, it is seriously reeling under numerous problems, one being the unavailability of proper toilet facilities.

Master Iddrisu Mohammed Rashad, the Senior Boys Prefect, expressed disquiet about the condition, explaining that the open defecation leads to the contamination of the major source of drinking water for the students, a dug-out dam.

Runoff water washes faecal matter into the dam whenever it rains heavily. A visit to the site confirmed that the dam, which lies on a lower gradient is constructed some 50 metres away from the boy’s dormitory.

Apart from the unbearable stench that emanates from the open defecation spot, Master Iddrisu Rashad, fears that a possible outbreak of cholera and other ailments are eminent if nothing is done about the situation immediately.

Other challenges facing the school include lack of accommodation for students and staff, lack of a library for the school and lack of potable water. Although the school has been running the boarding system for some time now, over-crowding at the dormitories is a major challenge to students, which sometimes compels them to sleep in their classrooms.

Also, students are forced to use the water from a dug-out dam together with cattle and other domestic animals in the community. It is distressing to learn that most students complain of stomach-ache and other water-related ailment from time to time. For instance, in a week an average of five students report of sickness at either the Savelugu Government Hospital or other health facilities in Tamale.

Source: Kwesi Yirenkyi Boateng, Public Agenda / (allAfrica.com, 2 August 2010

Burkina Faso: Race to achieve goals on sanitation

The government of Burkina Faso has embarked on the construction of 55,000 latrines each year to improve access to proper sanitation for the population from the present 10 percent to 54 percent by 2015.

According to the authorities, the average rate of access to sanitation in urban areas is currently 20 percent, while in rural areas, it is as low as one percent in some areas.

Burkina Faso will invest 24 million dollars in each of the next five years. The government, which now spends $8 million a year thanks to support from donors, plans to double, even triple its own annual contribution of around $2 million from the national budget.

“When you look at all sectors, things are moving. But on sanitation, a domain so fundamental to quality of life, we can see that we are very far behind,” Laurent Sédogo, Burkinabé minister for agriculture, water and fisheries resources told IPS.

“To put it plainly, out of every 1,000 people, only 100 have adequate (sanitation) infrastructure. The other 900 must take to the bush and, to protect their modesty, many wait until the dead of night because of the loss of vegetation,” Sédogo said.

Amélie Ouédraogo, a resident of the Tanghin neighbourhood of the Burkinabé capital Ouagadougou, said that construction of latrines will permit the dead to regain their peace. “Even the cemeteries are not safe when night falls. We see people headed there, but we cannot prevent them from relieving themselves.”

According to Ouédraogo, the situation is even more dire during the rainy season, because the water which flows through the streets, a favourite playground for children, is polluted. “We have cases of diarrhoea, but people refuse to make the link between these illnesses and their causes.”

Mahamoudou Sana, a merchant in one of Ouaga’s livestock markets said, “Once we have latrines, both we and our customers can make ablutions and wash ourselves before prayers. Previously, we had to hide ourselves in tall bush to relieve ourselves during the day.”

The ministry of health underlines that the absence of toilets leads to illness, notably diarrhoea, which is responsible for 58 percent of child deaths in Burkina.

According to non-governmental organisation WaterAid, some 2,000 children die every day. The NGO adds that simply using toilets could reduce the incidence of diarrhoea by 40 percent; clean toilets, combined with safe drinking water and good hygiene, cases of diarrhoea could be reduced by 90 percent.

WaterAid is worried that 90 percent of African nations will not achieve the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation, and says that African heads of state – who re-committed themselves to promoting maternal health at the July summit of the African Union – to resolve questions of sanitation if they want to reduce child and maternal mortality.

In rural areas, where 80 percent of Burkina Faso’s population lives, the government’s plan is for 395,000 households to build toilets, as well as the construction of 12,300 public latrines. The programme also foresees 222,000 new household toilets in urban centres, alongside 900 public latrines in schools, health centres, markets and public transit points.

The Burkinabé president, Blaise Compaoré, personally participated in the launch of the campaign, with an eye to enlisting both the general population and international financial partners to make sanitation a national priority.

The government offensive comes after finding that the pace of progress is insufficient to attain the goal on sanitation in a context of rapid population growth. According to the last census in 2006, Burkina Faso’s growth rate of three percent is one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and the world.

“Across West and Central Africa, coverage in urban areas varies between 30 and 60 percent, while in rural areas the rate is from 1 to 22 percent,” says Armah Klutsé, of the Regional Centre for Low-cost Water Supply and Sanitation (known by its French acronym, CREPA).

With headquarters in Ouagadougou, CREPA is active in 17 West and Central African countries, where it supports governments in the design and implementation of policy on sanitation and potable water.

“With this display of political will, it seems that action will be taken to achieve (sanitation goals),” Klutsé says.

Source: Brahima Ouédraogo, Inter Press Service / allAfrica.com, 31 July 2010

Ghana, Accra: use of pan latrines outlawed

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) says effective January 1, 2010, the use of pan latrines in the metropolis has been outlawed. Consequently, the assembly has warned that it will begin prosecuting offenders, since it has given enough public education for residents to convert their facilities to approved ones.

The move is part of attempts to comply with a Supreme Court order, which directed the assembly to completely phase out the use of the pan latrines in the metropolis by 2010. In has been two years since the Supreme Court ordered the assembly to stop the use of the facility across the national capital due to its environmental and health implications. But the AMA admits that the January 1, 2010 deadline as many as 5,294 households were still using this type of facility.

A coalition of some human rights organizations took the issue to the court, arguing that the carrying of human excreta in containers by human beings was a violation of their human rights, based on which the Supreme Court ruled that the assembly should phase out the facility, beginning this year.

Statistics made available by the Metropolitan Public Health Department of the AMA indicated that 5,002 residences, three industrial and 243 hospitality joints, as well as 46 schools in various parts of the city, were still using the pan latrines as of last year.

It further revealed that 70 per cent of residents in the metropolis did not have access to their own places of convenience and, therefore, relied on public ones, including the pan latrine facilities to attend to the call of nature, a situation which made a complete phase-out of the facility by the deadline, unattainable.

Those who are unable to endure the long queues find their way to the beaches and bushes to engage in “free range”, a practice which is common along the coast and also comes with dire environmental implications.

According to the Director of Metro Public Health, Dr Simpson Anim Boateng, pan latrines were being used all across the city though very common at areas such as Nima, Avenor, La, Nii Boi Town and Lapaz.

“Insignificant numbers of the facility can also be found in all the 11 sub-metros of the AMA,” he said.

In the Ablekuma North sub-metro alone, a total of 50 households were still using the facility, he said.

The use of the facility, according to Dr Anim Boateng, was against the AMA bye law and gave an assurance that the AMA would begin prosecuting offenders, since it had given enough public education for residents to convert their facilities to approved ones.

Aside the Supreme Court order, the Head of Environmental Protection and Standard Enforcement, Mr Daniel Kofi Opare, also explained that under the Ghana Environmental Sanitation Policy, all pan latrines nationwide are expected to be phased-out this year. Under the Urban Environmental Service Project (UESP), there are interventions for households who wish to convert their pan latrines to approved facilities.

Source: Peace FM, 06 Jan 2010