UN-Habitat report connects advances in sanitation to wider urban development

The recent second assembly of UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Progamme, in Nairobi (Kenya) in early June, saw the launch of a unique global study about challenges and advances in the management of wastewater and faecal sludge. Produced by a consortium led by WSUP and which included Aguaconsult, ESAWAS, UCLC, Thuyloi University, and GSMA, […]

Global Report on Sanitation and Wastewater Management in Cities and Human Settlements

Produced by a consortium led by WSUP, this Global Report on Sanitation and Wastewater Management in Cities and Human Settlements is a global reference on sanitation and wastewater in urban settings. It takes stock of the sanitation and wastewater management situation, both in terms of service levels and the supporting functions required to enable service […]

We must apply the lessons we have learnt to galvanise the sanitation economy

By Kariuki Mugo, Director of WASH Sector Support The WASH sector (water, sanitation and hygiene) is slow-acting and slow-learning. This fact became clear to me back in February while attending the International Faecal Sludge Management Conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. In particular, our workshop,“Bridging the Funding Gap for Sanitation Services in Informal Settlements”, helped me […]

Pilots offer alternatives to sanitation challenges in Zambia and Kenya

In Livingstone, south of Zambia, and Malindi, on the Kenyan coast, unsafe pit emptying services create public health risks for both workers and the community. The TRANSFORM project, implemented by WSUP and Sanivation, with support from Unilever, EY and UK Aid, offered legal, reliable and healthy pit emptying alternatives in low-income areas, with pilot projects […]

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation in Practice: Experience from Malindi, Kenya

For many African cities, offering a decent toilet to all urban residents and ensuring that all faecal waste is safely managed is an ambitious vision that will take years to achieve, unless there is a fundamental shift in the delivery of sanitation services. This shift is already happening in Kenya, where more than two thirds […]

A round-up of SWEEP: WSUP’s solution to tackle Bangladesh’s sanitation challenge

The SWEEP service has transformed the collection of human waste in three of the largest cities in Bangladesh, with the potential to go much further. This ground-breaking public-private sector led service was launched in Dhaka, in 2015, to address the lack of safe collection and treatment of sanitation waste services in the city. To date, […]

Mind the Gap: what happens when customers cannot afford safe sanitation?

By Sam Drabble, Head of Evaluation, Research & Learning In a recent publication, WSUP explored what quality sanitation means from a public health and user experience perspective. But there is a further question which is core to achieving Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: how can quality sanitation be financed? The scale of the financing challenge for urban […]

Mind the Gap: How can we address the shortfall in urban sanitation finance?

Sanitation for all is a challenge particularly acute for low and middle-income countries. In the face of funding constraints, and a lack of political influence among those living in poorer areas, governments have tended to under-prioritise sanitation as a public investment area. Yet, countries have committed to the Sustainable Development Goal for sanitation. In doing […]

WSUP publishes 2020-2021 Annual Report

WSUP has launched its 2020-2021 Annual Report, presenting our operations and impact in the year up to March 2021. Through work in our core countries Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Zambia, plus our emerging presence in Uganda and consultancy work in Malawi and Cambodia, we were proud to improve the lives of 6.7 million […]

Valuing toilets: how customers rate the container-based sanitation experience

By Sam Drabble, Head of Evaluation, Research & Learning Container-based sanitation (CBS) offers an innovative response to the challenge of sanitation in densely populated urban settlements. This blog presents key findings from a ground-breaking study looking at customer satisfaction with Clean Team Ghana, a CBS provider owned by WSUP serving over 3200 customers in Kumasi, […]