Sanitation challenges on the rise in Africa despite strong economic indicators
Africa is one of this century’s great success stories. Economic growth has been strong. The prosperity and well-being of its people are improving fast.
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The continent’s rich resources - from the minerals under the ground to the talent, potential and dynamism of its young population - give great hope for the future.
But not all indicators are moving in the right direction. Few are more disturbing or have such a damaging impact than the continent’s lack of basic sanitation.
People in sub-Saharan Africa have more cell phones than access to toilets. It is now the only region where the number of people without access to adequate sanitation is still rising. In fact, the fast-growing population and strong migration to urban centres means by that some calculations, those without clean water and proper sanitation have soared almost three-fold to 600 million since 1990.
It is easy to see why this failure does not get the attention it deserves. It is, after all, a fact of life for many Africans. It is an embarrassing subject which we are all taught, wherever we grow up, to avoid in conversation. Nor, of course, does it fit easily into the narrative of a continent on the march.
But it is simply too costly to let taboos and embarrassment over the lack of toilets or the safe disposal of human waste keep us from addressing this crisis. The consequences are devastating and threaten to undermine Africa’s progress.
Poor sanitation contributes to 1.5 million global child deaths from diarrhoeal diseases each year. It is now one of the biggest killers of children under five in Africa. Chronic diarrhoea also holds back, often permanently, the physical and mental development of those who survive.
This is why the World Bank has estimated that a lack of proper sanitation reduces the GDP of 18 African countries by an average of 1 to 2.5 per cent each year. The costs go, of course, far wider than health and prosperity. The lack of sanitation robs girls and women in particular of their privacy and dignity as well as increasing the risk to their personal safety.
Given this damaging impact and the wider effect of untreated sewage on our environment, it is no exaggeration to say the flush toilet can take its place as one of the most important developments of the modern age. Countless lives have been saved across the world because of its invention.
But the flush toilet is now over 200 years old. It is hard to think of many developments which have stayed basically the same over such a long period. They also require huge investment in pipes and facilities and vast amounts of land, energy, water and money to run. In a world in which water is increasingly scarce, such systems which treat large volumes of water to drinking standards and then use it to flush waste down the drain are simply not sustainable.
We believe there have to be better and more cost-effective solutions. Innovation is particularly needed in densely populated areas where millions of people are capturing and storing waste with no sustainable way to handle it once their septic tank or latrine pit is full. We need non-sewered, hygienic toilets which don’t require connections to water or electricity.
That’s the challenge set by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that engineers and researchers in Africa and across the world are now working flat out to meet. Through grants to identify, develop and test new models for processing and treating human waste, we have seen an explosion of innovative thinking in sustainable sanitations solutions.
They range from stand-alone toilets which eliminate germs and disease from human waste, to market-driven solutions which support local businesses and see treated waste become fertiliser or being used to generate electricity. Not for the first time, we are seeing Africans working with partners around the globe to develop and adapt technology to meet their needs.
In Ghana, for example, a system using worms and insects has been developed to safely decompose human waste from domestic, office or school toilets. We are also seeing governments and local authorities beginning to build effective public-private partnerships to provide sanitation through the right regulatory framework and modern procurement processes. In Dakar, Senegal, the government has structured the market for private operators to empty pit latrines and septic tanks by creating and testing new call-centre and payment methods that improve services and cut costs for households.
These innovations might not be as glamorous, for example, as the way the continent has pioneered innovative services that use mobile phones to extend banking services to many millions of its citizens. But collecting and treating human waste safely and sustainably will have an even greater impact on progress and quality of life.
It is too important for the continent to continue to ignore.
Doulaye Kone is a Senior Program Officer for Sanitation Technologies and Tools at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
A version of this article appears in print on page 55 of the Daily Graphic of March 24, 2014