from the WASHplus Project

Optimising Africa’s megacities

Africa News, 20 April 2012, By Kaci Racelma

As African cities implode, leaders on the continent are intensifying efforts to address the challenges of urbanization. A forum bringing together Africa’s housing ministers was recently held in Nairobi, Kenya on 20 March 2012 under the auspices of the African Ministers Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD).

UN Photo

The 4th annual meeting focused on territorial planning and access to basic services for all. It also looked to integrate climate change issues for a smarter more sustainable urban development. In the last 7 years, the conference has allowed members to share ideas and discuss effective strategies in line with the “cities without slums” initiative that was originally adopted in 2005.

For some slum dwellers on the continent, it’s just talk. “I am only interested in being removed from here, to live in a more decent environment,” says Rachid Lashab, who lives in the Essekouila slum in Casablanca. “I am not interested in the many conferences that our leaders attend.”

Crowding and disease

According to estimates by UN-Habitat, 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in slums in 2010, or 61.7 per cent of the region’s urban population, the highest rate in the world. North Africa had another 12 million slum dwellers; that was just 13.3 per cent of its urban residents, the lowest rate in the developing world.

The lack of adequate sanitation, potable water and electricity, in addition to substandard housing and overcrowding, aggravates the spread of diseases and avoidable deaths, according to a recent report of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Slums contribute to low life expectancy. In Mali, for example, more than 80 per cent of the population lacks good housing and average life expectancy is just 51 years, according to the UN Development Programme.

Mali’s situation reflects that of much of sub-Saharan Africa. Fofana Gakou Salamah, Mali’s former minister of housing, land affairs and planning, urged urgent measures from Africa’s housing ministers. “We must take decisive action,” she said. “Otherwise there is the risk of having an urban population [in Mali] of about 6 million souls still living in informal settlements by 2020,” or nearly twice the current number.

Jugurtha Ait El Hadj, an Algeria-based urban planner, believes that African ministers are on the right course. “Such meetings are especially helpful in that they allow exchange of experiences. But these meetings must be accompanied by concrete steps.”

There are many roadblocks to achieving the dream of cities without slums. Algerian Minister for Housing and Urban Development Nouredine Moussa noted that the expansion of cities in Africa limits the ability of national and local governments to provide security and supply basic social services in health, education, water and sanitation.

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The Journal of Environment Development, March 2012, vol. 21 no. 1 98-119

Participatory Decision Making for Sanitation Improvements in Unplanned Urban Settlements in East Africa

• Full-text (pdf)

Astrid Hendriksen, et al. Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands

Solving the problem of inadequate access to sanitation in unplanned settlements in East Africa needs to combine social and technical dimensions in such a manner that they fit the local context. The modernized mixtures approach offers an analytical framework for identifying such solutions, but this approach requires effective methods for participatory decision making.

This article intends to contribute to filling this gap by identifying and further elaborating an appropriate multicriteria decision-making tool. The multicriteria decision analysis methodology, Proact 2.0, offers an adequate solution as it creates the possibility to connect knowledge, experiences, and preferences from scientists, experts, and policy makers with those of the end users.

We show in particular that users not always prefer the most optimal sanitation system, defined from an “expert” point of view. This article concludes that using Proact 2.0 can lead to substantial improvements in decision making in the field of sanitation in unplanned settlements in East Africa.

Water Policy. March 2012 | doi:10.2166/wp.2012.093

Analyzing sanitation characteristics in the urban slums of East Africa

Gábor L. Szántóa,*, S. C. Letemaa,d, J. T. Tukahirwaa,e, S. Mganac, P. J. M. Oosterveera and J. C. L. van Buurenb

Corresponding author. E-mail: gbrsznt@gmail.com

Urban slums in East Africa exhibit deplorable sanitary conditions. Despite (inter)national efforts, slum sanitation provision remains inadequate and the projected population growth forecasts a worsening of this crisis. The core of the problem is that available knowledge about the local feasibility of the currently applied sanitary methods is limited. This paper analyses the interface of sanitation policy and technology domains by reviewing the distribution and local characteristics of current centralized and decentralized sanitation options.

The findings confirm that conventional, centralized sanitation is an unrealistic solution for application in slums. Simplified sewerage may prove appropriate, but the reported initiatives are in the planning phase only. At present, only decentralized sanitation options are found to be viable in the assessed slums, but their servicing is increasingly neglected by the municipal authorities. The quasi-monopoly of pit latrines implies that improved sanitation technologies are not sufficiently rooted yet.

Public toilets are crucial to these slums, especially where land tenure issues prevail. Although the potential of ecological sanitation is currently negligible, novel biocenter initiatives are promising. Municipal authorities are advised to prioritize the implementation of elsewhere successful slum sanitation technologies and to integrate appropriate decentral solutions into their predominantly centralized sanitation scheme.