Building resilience faster: Join us for World Water Week 2021

How can water help us tackle the world’s greatest challenges and build resilient cities faster? Join us virtually for four sessions during the week to find out. As the world faces multiple challenges from increasing urban populations to climate change and with the SDG deadline fast approaching, finding ways to improve the resilience of cities […]

Towards a cleaner and more productive Malindi and Watamu

The residents of the coastal town of Malindi, popular for its beautiful beaches, largely depend on on-site sanitation. There is no waste treatment plant and only 25% of the waste is safely managed. As a result, 90% of hand dug wells are contaminated causing serious health risks in the communities. Leaders in Kilifi County Government […]

Shared sanitation in low-income urban settlements: Evidence from Ghana, Kenya and Bangladesh

Shared sanitation has immensely contributed to sanitation access in urban areas, but is at best considered a “limited” solution due to the lack of quality standards within Sustainable Development Goal 6. This policy brief presents the main results of the QUISS project (Quality Indicators of Shared Sanitation), a three-country comparative mixed-methods study that identified the […]

Integrated Slum Upgrading: how can we link water and sanitation with wider urban development?

Marginalised urban communities are often characterised by three things: complexity, interdependence of challenges, and constant evolution. The sheer numbers of people living close together in poorly planned communities can make improving the quality of life extremely difficult. The rapid rate of urbanisation – by 2050, the number of people living in African cities will double […]

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: Resource Planning and Management

For urban sanitation systems to function safely, at scale, over time, and inclusively, they must be organized to support three functions: responsibility, accountability, and resource planning and management. This short publication looks at the function of resource planning and management, drawing on a desk review of over 40 urban sanitation investments in twenty-eight countries across Africa, Asia and Latin […]

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: Accountability

For urban sanitation systems to function safely, at scale, over time, and inclusively, they must be organized to support three functions: responsibility, accountability, and resource planning and management. In this paper, we explore the accountability mechanisms that can be applied to the different service provision mandate structures identified in our parallel paper on responsibilities. Click for a longer […]

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: Responsibility

For urban sanitation systems to function safely, at scale, over time, and inclusively, they must be organized to support three functions: responsibility, accountability, and resource planning and management. This short publication looks at the function of responsibility: the extent to which sanitation authorities are clearly mandated. Click for a longer version of this publication, which explains the responsibility function […]

What does ‘quality’ sanitation mean in low-income urban areas?

By Sam Drabble, Head of Evaluation, Research & Learning Broadly speaking, when we advocate for investment in sanitation, it is because we are trying to achieve two critically important aims: improve human health, and improve wellbeing or quality of life. But to what extent are sanitation interventions actually achieving these aims? In many cases, the […]

Quality Check: How can we ensure sanitation achieves health and quality of life outcomes in low-income areas?

This discussion paper explores how high-quality sanitation can be achieved in low-income urban areas in developing contexts. It is based on findings from four research projects conducted under, or in association with, WSUP’s Urban Sanitation Research Initiative 2016–2020 (USRI), funded by DFID. The four research projects considered here are: The Faecal Pathogen Flows study in […]

Illegal water connections Biafra, Nairobi

Citywide access to water and sanitation services in Kenya

Clean, piped water brings dignity to people, reduces living costs, frees up time – and crucially, given the situation right now, is a critical defence against infectious diseases. With the support of The Coca-Cola Foundation’s Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN), Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has been working with Kenyan city authorities to […]