09 JANUARY 2012
An action research initiative has begun in four African countries to develop and test a community-driven model of tackling sanitation problems in cities. The three-year project seeks to generate findings to assist community organisations as they try to improve sanitation as part of wider efforts to upgrade informal settlements. Nearly 800 million people living in urban areas worldwide currently lack access to sanitation.
The research will be conducted in the cities of Lilongwe in Malawi, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Kitwe in Zambia, and Chinhoyi in Zimbabwe, and it will be led by IIED and SDI.
The project aims to:
• Investigate the critical obstacles to city-wide sanitation and explore ways to overcome these
• Develop and test pro-poor city-wide sanitation strategies that can be adapted by federations of community organisations, and supported by public authorities and private providers
• Strengthen SDI’s capacity to support the development of city-wide sanitation strategies across Africa
The three year-long stages of the research process include a situation analysis of the cities, precedent-setting in selected communities, and the development and initiation of city-wide strategies through a partnership between communities and the relevant local authorities. SDI affiliates will work to build solidarity in the selected communities, primarily helping women to organise themselves in savings groups, and then to apply their ‘social capital’ to sanitary improvements, such as funding the construction of communal toilets, negotiating resources from the local authorities, and redesigning solutions so they can go to scale. Above all, this project builds on existing relationships between IIED, SDI and low-income communities in developing countries.
Certain urban sanitation challenges were mentioned during the project’s inception meeting held in Harare in Zimbabwe in September. Tanzanian participants highlighted difficulties with blocked drains caused by littering, the lack of affordable toilets, and access problems for pit-emptying vehicles in narrow lanes in informal settlements. Solutions were shared too . Researchers from Malawi explained that eco-san toilets are becoming common in certain parts of Lilongwe, and schools have started replacing pit latrines with such facilities. Moreover, links between sanitary improvement and the upgrading of informal settlements were emphasised; once people have a good toilet and bathroom, they are more likely to upgrade the rest of their home.
Dr Martin Mulenga, a senior researcher from the Human Settlements Group at IIED, said: “Sanitation is a collective problem that demands a collective response, if not from the public sector, then from grassroots organisations. Based on the SDI federation model of building community solidarity, this project will help stimulate the political changes that allow sanitation programmes to evolve into a city-wide sanitation process. In addition to providing a model for urban sanitary improvement, the project will provide SDI and others developing community-driven approaches with the capacity to adapt and apply this model on a larger scale.”
The city-wide project demonstrates SHARE’s commitment to urban sanitation solutions and it builds on previous activities. At World Water Week in August 2011, SHARE co-organised a session entitled Making urban sanitation safe and fair. At the event, Dr Gordon McGranahan, Principal Researcher from the Human Settlements Group at IIED, explained the key obstacles to providing toilets in informal settlements, including the lack of community organisation, an overly sectoral approach to water and sanitation (neglecting broader community needs), unaffordable technologies and poor community-government relations. He also drew on examples including the Orangi Pilot Project in Pakistan to show how community organisations can overcome political barriers by identifying their own needs, and engaging in collective negotiations with municipalities and utilities to lobby for, and later manage, appropriate and affordable sanitation solutions.
