Kenya: cooking on biogas from toilets in Kibera

The dire sanitation systems available to the hundreds of thousands living in the Nairobi slum of Kibera, often called Africa’s biggest slum, has been well-documented. Less talked about is the challenge of household energy for the urban poor. The Katwekera Tosha Bio Centre, operated by the Umande Trust, goes well beyond solving sanitation problems; it is a model for green energy, a meeting place for locals, and turning a profit for its operators.

The Umande Trust is a rights-based agency which believes that modest resources, strategically invested in support of community-led initiatives, can significantly improve access to water and sanitation for all,” says Paul Muchire, the Trust’s communication manager. This mission statement has guided the Trust towards partnerships with community-based organisations to improve the living conditions of people in places like Kibera.

The Trust first set out to build toilets and bathrooms, but had a larger vision: TOSHA, “Total Sanitation and Hygiene Access”, was born. The centre has toilets and bathrooms on the ground floor – the toilets are connected to a bio-digester, with a dome-shaped holding tank in which biogas is produced. Raw human waste from the toilets flows in, and bacteria break it down, releasing methane gas which collects at the top of the domed tank. The gas is piped to collective stoves one floor up – and is usually sufficient for community members to cook on throughout the day. They pay a small fixed fee for using the stoves.

From a business perspective, the profits from these centres are also significant. Katwekera Tosha makes a monthly profit of between 350 and 650 dollars. This money benefits the residents who have registered with the community-based organisation.

Source: Portal to Africa.com, 29 March 2011

Kenya: Profiting From Better Sanitation

Like any other Kenyan slum, Waruku settlement, part of Nairobi’s sprawling Kangemi slums is bursting under population pressure. The mud and corrugated iron walled shanties are packed together – neighbours can literally talk to each other from the comfort of their beds. Plots are separated by footpaths that are often just centimetres wide, some of which double as drainage channels.

Drinking water has to be bought from vendors, sometimes without knowing where it comes from. There is hardly any space for sinking pit latrines. Waruku residents often drop their faecal matter into plastic bags, and then fling them above the slum canopy, Nairobi slums’ infamous ‘flying toilets.’

Teresia Wasuka, mother of five, has lived as a squatter in Waruku settlement, for several years. In 2007, she joined a collective savings group. She contributed towards building toilets for her community, in return Teresia Wasuka is getting a home to call her own.

Source: Isaiah Esipisu, Inter Press Service /allAfrica.com, 6 March 2011

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Uganda: Museveni warns against toilet fees

President Yoweri Museveni has described the practice of overcharging by operators of public toilet and markets as “parasitism”.

“Instead of developing common facilities in markets, business people make huge money out of people defecating. For somebody to use a toilet in Nakawa market, he must pay sh200 [9 US dollar cents]. This is not acceptable,” he stressed.

Museveni was speaking at the opening of the second national conference of his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party on 11 September 2010.

Running public toilets in towns has become a gold mine, especially in Kampala.

Kampala City Council estimates that there are over 2,550 users of public toilets per day.

According to a recent Saturday Vision survey, public toilet operators in Nakasero market and the Old Taxi Park, for instance, charge sh500 [22 US dollar cents] for bathing, sh200 [9 US dollar cents] ablution, sh300 [14 US dollar cents] long calls and sh200 [9 US dollar cents]  for short calls.

The survey revealed that an operator can make at least sh12,000 per hour just from one item.

Related news: Ghana: toilet wars, WASH news Africa, 12 Feb 2009

Source: New Vision, 14 Sep 2010

Kenya: Fear of attack leaves women prisoners in their homes

Women and girls in Nairobi’s slums live under the constant threat of sexual violence, leaving them often too scared to leave their houses to use communal toilet and bathroom facilities, Amnesty International said in a report released today.

Insecurity and Indignity: Women’s experiences in the Slums of Nairobi, Kenya details how the failure of the government to incorporate the slums in urban plans and budgets has resulted in poor access to services like sanitation, which hits women in slums and informal settlements especially hard.

“Women in Nairobi’s settlements become prisoners in their own homes at night and some times well before it is dark,” said Godfrey Odongo, Amnesty Internationals East Africa researcher. “They need more privacy than men when going to the toilet or taking a bath and the inaccessibility of facilities make women vulnerable to rape, leaving them trapped in their own homes.

“The fact that they are unable to access even the limited communal toilet facilities also puts them at risk of illness.”

The situation is compounded by the lack of police presence in the slums and when women fall victim to violence they are unlikely to see justice done. Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum and home to up to a million people, has no police post.

“I always underestimated the threat of violence,” said 19-year-old Amina of Mathare slum. “I would go to the latrine any time provided it was not too late. This was until about two months ago when I almost became a victim of rape.”

Amina was set upon by a group of four men while she walked to the latrine at 7pm. They hit her, undressed her and were about to rape her when her cries were heard and a group of residents came to save her. Although she knew one of the men involved in the assault, Amina did not go to the police as she feared reprisal attacks.

Unable to leave their one-roomed houses after dark, many women in informal settlements resort to ‘flying toilets’ – using plastic bags thrown from the home to dispose of waste.

Women also told Amnesty International how the poor sanitary conditions they live in – which include widespread disposal of human excreta in the open because of lack of adequate access to toilets – directly contribute to cases of poor health and to high health care costs.

Other women describe the humiliation of bathing in front of their relatives and children.

Even by day, public bathroom facilities are few and far between and invariably involve walking long distances. According to official figures, only 24 per cent of residents in Nairobi’s informal settlements have access to toilet facilities at household level.

Despite some positive features, Kenya’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) policies to meet the target on sanitation do not address the specific needs of women who face the threat of violence because they lack adequate sanitation.

They also do not address the lack of enforcement of regulations requiring owners and landlords to provide sanitation.

“There is a huge gap between what the government commits to do, and what is going on in the slums everyday” said Godfrey Odongo.

“Kenya’s national policies recognise the rights to sanitation and there are laws and standards in place. However, because of decades of failure to recognize slums and informal settlements, planning laws and regulations are not enforced in these areas.

“The lack of enforcement of these laws has ensured that landlords and structure owners in the slums can get away without providing any toilets or shower places for their tenants”

Lack of security of tenure also remains a long standing problem for tenants, despite a national land policy in place, removing any incentives that landlords or owners could have to ensure proper sanitation, and measures to increase security.

Amnesty International calls on the Kenyan government to enforce landlords’ obligations to construct toilets and bathrooms in the slums and settlements and provide assistance to structure owners who are unable to meet the costs of constructing toilets and bathrooms.

The government must also take immediate measures to improve security, lighting and policing and ensure that relevant government authorities coordinate their efforts to improve the water and sanitation situation in the settlements.

Source: Amnesty International press release, 7 July 2010

Download full document: Amnesty International (2010). Insecurity and indignity : women’s experiences in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. London, UK, Amnesty International Publications.

Kenya: pay toilet entrepeneur features in US documentary

The three young college graduates are the subject of “The New Recruits,” a fascinating PBS documentary, which aired on US television on 15 June 2010. The film chronicles their yearlong adventure with “social entrepreneurship,” a philosophy that combines humanitarianism and capitalism to fight global poverty.

The young entrepreneurs are Suraj Sudhakar who sold pay-toilet services in Kenya, Heidi Krauel who peddled solar-powered lights in India, and Joel Montgomery who pushed drip irrigation in Pakistan.

The trio was trained by the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit group that believes free enterprise is the best way to help Third World countries. The film is narrated by Rainn Wilson of NBC’s “The Office” and directed by Jeremy Newberger, Seth Kramer and Daniel A. Miller, who earlier made “The Linguists.”

Sudhakar’s story is the most compelling — and depressing.

Suraj Sudhakar. Photo: PBS

In a slum outside Nairobi, pigs, dogs, chickens and humans scurry across huge mounds of garbage. The area lacks a sanitation system, making it what one local calls an “open defecation zone.”

The company that Sudhakar works for, Ecotact, installs pay toilets that cost about eight cents per visit. A “World Toilet Day” featuring a speech by Kenya’s minister of public health and sanitation is held to publicize the facilities. A comedian entertains the crowd with one-liners such as, “Did you just make a big one or a small one?”

In order to create a high-class image, the company opens the first toilets in the city’s business district. “Don’t forget us,” pleads a small group of children in the slums. Sudhakar promises to come back.

[...]

The film says only 50 percent of social entrepreneur jobs survive their first four years. Yet by the end of the film, Krauel and Montgomery are seeking new opportunities to sell to the poor and Suhakar has enthusiastically returned to Kenya, where he now is project manager for Peepoople, an organization that provides hygienic sanitation.

Source: Bloomberg, 15 Jun 2010

See below a Global Water Challenge (GWC) video about Ecotact.

Nigeria, Lagos State: Govt approves 100 solar-powered toilets for communities

Lagos State Government unveiled one solar-powered toilet project recently constructed for the use of its residents living in Lekki.

The government also approved more than 100 of the same projects for rural communities across the state.

Speaking during an inspection tour, Commissioner for Rural Development, Prince Lanre Balogun, explained that the state government chose the projects because most people in Lagos communities “are defecating the environment because they do not have toilets.”

He added that the lack of toilet facilities in different Lagos communities informed the state government’s decision to build the communal toilet powered by solar energy to serve the community. He said: “In this area, people defecate in the open environment, this is bad. These solar-powered toilets, if properly maintained, could last for 25 years. It is of the same standard you can get anywhere in the world.”

Source: Gboyega Akinsanmi, This Day / allAfrica.com, 10 Sep 2009

Rwanda: US$ 25 Million for Rural Water and Sanitation Programme

Rwanda will receive US$ 24.76 million (UA* 16 million) in the form of grants to finance the second phase of the country’s second 2009-2012 Rural Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Sub-Programme (PNEAR).

The funding comprises a UA 10 million African Development Fund (ADF) grant and a UA 6 million grant from the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative (RWSSI) Trust Fund.

The PNEAR aims at improving drinking water supply services in 216 rural localities in the North, West and South provinces; improving household sanitation services in 216 rural localities, and community sanitation services in 15 districts. The overall goal is to provide rural communities with sustainable drinking water supply and sanitation services to improve their health and living conditions.

It involves the construction of 16,000 new individual latrines for the most vulnerable families; 130 new multi-compartment latrines and 100 storm-water harvesting reservoirs in village public infrastructures (schools, health centres and other public places); and the training of 500 masons on latrine construction techniques.

Other outputs include the training of 250 female outreach workers and 100 school teachers on hygiene in villages; provision of a large drinking water supply network covering 150 km; constructing 10 medium water supply scheme networks covering 275 km; developing 1000 drinking water supply sources fitted with laundry tubs; training 200 district borehole drillers in the maintenance of water facilities; training 10 private operators in the operation and maintenance of complex water supply systems; and conducting outreach and sensitization campaigns in 216 localities in the three provinces concerned with the programme.

[...] The direct beneficiaries of the sub-programme are the inhabitants of the 15 districts who account for 5.05 million of the country’s 9.7 population.

The sub-programme is estimated at UA 20.265 million. The ADF funding will cover 79% of the costs while the government and the beneficiary community will provide UA 3.254 million or 16%, and UA 1.011 million or 5% of the total cost, respectively.

* 1 UA Units of Account) = 1.54805 US$ = 877.915 RWF on 01/07/2009

Source: African Development Bank, 02 Jul 2009

Kenya: Mukuru BioCentres project wins honorable mention in 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

The Mukuru BioCentres project, submitted by Umande Trust (Kenya) and GOAL Ireland, has received an honorable mention in the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. BioCentres offer “a comprehensive solution to some of the most egregious problems of urban slums, from poor sanitation to lack of clean water to unpredictable or nonexistent energy infrastructure”, according to the jury report. “The BioCentres, of which there are already 12 in operation in Kenya, are public toilets housed above a biogas digester that produces affordable fuel from human waste, which is then made available to the local community. The facilities also provide clean water, public space, and workspace which serves as an incubator for local businesses”.

 

BioCentre in Kibera, Nairobi. Photo: Unmande Trust / Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Read the full project description here.

Web site: Unimade – BioCentres

Source: Buckminster Fuller Challenge, 04 May 2009

Ghana: Ministry provides subsidies for household toilets

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development says it has a subsidy facility reduce the cost of providing household toilet facilities in a bid to reduce pressure on neighbourhood and public toilets.

This was announced by the Director of Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr. Demedeme Naa Lenason

He reminded landlords that it is an offence not to provide these toilet facilities for households and that steps were being taking to ensure that recalcitrant landlords are made to face the full rigors of the law.

According to the 2000 Population and Housing Census more than 20% of Ghanaians do not have any form of latrines and therefore resort to open defecation which posses serious environmental and health threats to society.

Speaking recently at a media briefing in Accra on “Health Menace of Public Latrines” Mr. Lenason said that the 2000 census revealed that 31.45% of households in Ghana use public latrines as compared to 8.5% using Water Closet , 22% pit latrine, 6.9% KVIP , bucket or pan latrine 4% and with 6.9% attending nature’s call in other people’s houses.

“Enhancing access to adequate Environmental Sanitation is known to be associated with improved quality of human resource and poverty reduction through its impact on favorable health outcomes and increased productivity,” he said.

Mr. Lenason indicated that the Ministry’s Environmental Sanitation Policy of 1999 is unequivocal on households and public toilets; the policy states that at least 90% of a population should have access to acceptable domestic toilet while the remaining 10% has access to hygienic toilets.

According to him hygienic public toilets are provided for the transient population in all areas of intense public activities such as markets, shopping areas, transport terminals, etc but unfortunately most people in Ghana use it as their permanent places of convenience.

He said with the increasing pressure on these public toilet facilities it is common to see neighborhood toilets become full and overflowing which often leads to their closure , thus depriving the users this essential service.

“The facilities are often messy, smelling, unhygienic and dirty, users will then have no other option than to resort to other unacceptable options such as “free ranging” he added.

The Director indicated that his outfit has over the years pursued strategies aimed at minimizing the health impact of poor neighborhood public latrines and the wide gap that exist in the access to sanitation.

Some of these interventions includes increase in participation of the private sector in the management of existing public toilets, promoting better and modern technologies , de-emphasing neighborhood public toilets to force landlords to provide households toilets for tenants, rehabilitating and conversion of existing public toilets to more modern ones .

In addition his outfit is working to strengthen institutions that have responsibilities for the enforcement of sanitation laws and development control e.g Environmental Health, Development Control Units of the various MMDAs and also enforcing standards and conditions of franchise agreements for public toilets through effective monitoring.

Government and its development partners have made large investments in the water and sanitation sector with the aim of accelerating the provision of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation in both rural and urban communities to enhance the achievement of the MDGs particularly goal 7 which aims at halving by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation.

Source: Public Agenda / allAfrica.com, 08 May 2009

Namibia: roads toilet debate revived

WINDHOEK – The idea of erecting flushable ablution facilities along the national road network is still alive, and the final decision will be made next month on whether or not to go ahead with the plan.

Roads Authority, together with the Ministry of Works and Transport, will embark on a second public consultation meeting to solicit public interest, to decide whether to scrap the idea or implement it. The first meeting took place in Windhoek in September [in 2008].

Roads Authority, which is entrusted with information gathering, say they are planning another consultative meeting outside Windhoek. This will be the second consultative meeting since the idea of public toilets along the national road was mooted.

“The idea is not dead, we only have to consult with stakeholders after which a decision would be taken,” said spokesperson for Roads Authority, Audrin Mathe.

In September [2008], the Minister of Works and Transport, Helmut Angula, proposed the idea to Cabinet, citing the dilemma facing motorists along the country’s vast and long tarred roads.

Cabinet instructed his ministry to look into the problem and the result was for Government to seriously consider modern measures that will relieve motorists and passengers when nature calls while travelling along the country’s long-distance roads.

The proposal is that ablution facilities of flushable nature, and not the pit latrine type, be constructed along the entire national tarred road network, at intervals of at least 20-kilometre distance.

Source: Desie Heita, New Era, 12 May 2009