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 provision at scale. Drawing from existing literature and primary data in 18 cities across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, the report underlines the scale of the challenge in strengthening wastewater and faecal sludge management at the global level, while also highlighting actions being taken by governments, development partners, city planners, utilities, service providers and researchers around the globe. Focus is on service levels, containment and treatment systems, treatment performance, policies and regulations and institutional arrangement, planning and investment, monitoring, and financial performance.

For the full report, fact sheet, and additional information, go to the report page on the UN Habitat website.

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From climate adaptation efforts to a stronger push for better living conditions for women and girls, in 2021-2022 WSUP advanced further in its work providing clean water and decent sanitation and promoting appropriate hygiene in low-income urban communities.

Our 2021-2022 Annual Report shows the result of WSUP’s activities, benefitting more than 1 million people in the past year, across Africa and South Asia. In the period, we achieved:

618,418 people with improved water access;

580,730 residents with improved sanitation services;

168,454 people with improved access to good hygiene;

and mobilised more than $12 million in additional investment.

Lord Paul Boateng, WSUP’s chairman, wrote:

“In addition to our work with households and families, we are also investing more and more in providing clean water and decent toilets in schools, helping reduce student absences and improving the educational chances for children, particularly girls.”

Ed Mitchell, who in 2022 assumed the position of WSUP’s CEO, writes:

“Together with our supportive partners, we can take pride in what we’ve done so far, but we also need to raise our sights and ambitions to reach many more people in desperate need.”

The WSUP report A Guide to Simplified Sewer Systems in Kenya describes how a pilot project in the informal settlement of Mukuru has demonstrated a cost-effective way to bring decent sanitation to some communities in Kenya: simplified sewers.

New evidence shows that simplified sewer networks, which are much shallower and more flexible than traditional sewer systems, can form part of the solution to sanitation challenges faced by low-income urban communities in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. In the city’s densely packed informal communities, most people lack access to decent sanitation.

The practical and financial challenges of addressing this crisis are well documented, but the alternative of simplified sewers networks opens up new possibilities for better sanitation which could benefit millions of Kenyans.

A summary: the Nairobi simplified sewers pilot

It can be done report cover

A joint publication by AMCOW, Speak Up Africa, UNICEF and WSUP

On the 10th of June, 2021, the African Council of Ministers on Water (AMCOW) launched the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines (ASPG), a new initiative to help improve national and subnational sanitation and hygiene policy across the continent.

The policy guidelines aim to ease the process of resolving country-level enabling environment bottlenecks that stand in the way of African governments in meeting their national, regional, and global sanitation and hygiene obligations. They provide direction in functional policy drafting, broad stakeholder engagement, monitoring, and generic technical content specific to sanitation and hygiene service provision.

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This report explains the background to the creation of the ASPG and presents the importance of these policy guidelines. It then outlines examples from across Africa showing how the six parts to the guidelines can be applied:

Sanitation Systems and Services (South Africa)

Hygiene and Behaviour Change (Rwanda)

Institutional Arrangements (Senegal)

Regulation (Zambia)

Capacity Development (South Africa)

Funding and Financing (Chad)

High-level advocacy is key to the success of the ASPG rollout. Engaging senior policymakers in this process is the winning formula of success. Time and resources will be invested in continuous advocacy meetings and a wide stakeholder engagement to ensure no one is left behind during the policy process.The ASPG provides a wide range of resources that requires investing in the various stakeholders’ capacity building. This process presents an excellent opportunity for documenting both the learning and sharing, as part of knowledge management for policy processes.

Previous experiences across the continent clarify that Africa can achieve the indicators of progress outlined in the guidelines because they have been done before, even if only in a few countries. This time around the focus is on increasing the scale of success to the entire continent.

Africa has rightfully and decisively opted to pursue something that its leaders and populations can deliver. With political will and determination to design the right policies towards a common goal, the African Sanitation Policy Guidelines should generate a high level of confidence and certainty amongst the continent’s authorities, summarised by these encouraging words: it can be done.

 

During 2020-2021, WSUP’s work became more vital than ever before, with the Covid-19 pandemic driving increased need for general good hygiene practices.

Our Annual Report shows where, how, and how much WSUP’s work has benefited the communities it serves across Africa and south Asia.

In the year to March 2021, despite global challenging circumstances, WSUP reached:

515,000 people with improved water access

721,000 residents with improved sanitation services;

5.5 million people with improved access to good hygiene;

and mobilised $8 million in additional investment.

Lord Paul Boateng, WSUP’s chairman, says in his opening message:

“As a world leader in research and practical assistance in the market-led delivery of access to urban water, sanitation and hygiene, our efforts are critical to the achievement of SDG 6, clean water and sanitation, and SDG 11, sustainable communities and cities.”

Neil Jeffery, WSUP’s CEO, adds:

“Covid-19 highlighted how vital water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is, how central it can be to combating disease and how WSUP’s expertise is fundamental to overcoming that challenge in urban areas.”

Download WSUP Annual Report 2020-21

 

Container-based sanitation (CBS) systems are acknowledged by the JMP as providing improved sanitation services. By contrast with onsite-infiltration systems, such as latrines and septic tanks, container-based systems ensure full containment of faecal waste.

This Research Brief presents the results of an evaluation of user experience of CBS. The study found that CBS provides social benefits including increased satisfaction for women, and for those unable to use the toilet at night or otherwise excluded from accessing toilets for physical or social reasons.

Most Clean Team Ghana customers previously used public toilets – they show higher satisfaction with CBS, and on average, paid 3.6 USD or 20 GHS person/month less for sanitation with Clean Team Ghana. The study strengthens the evidence base that CBS, under the right arrangements, should be considered as an option to be included in the national sanitation policy and contribute towards Ghana meeting Sanitation for All.

For the poorest urban residents, one of the most significant ways in which climate change is affecting their lives is through access to water and sanitation.

In sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, water and sanitation service providers are struggling to respond to the needs of communities, and climate change is making it harder for these providers to expand services to keep pace with urbanisation. This challenge represents a major threat towards the ability of cities to adapt to climate change and could compromise their future sustainability.

This report analyses the impacts of climate change on access to water and sanitation across cities and towns in seven countries. It outlines the challenges that service providers are facing and documents initiatives that are taking place to tackle the issue. Based on this analysis, WSUP presents four recommendations for helping water and sanitation providers to tackle the threat caused by climate change.

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 and the water and sanitation utility, Malindi Water and Sewerage Company (MAWASCO) have recognised the urgent need to improve the sanitation and solid waste challenges in the city and have created an ambitious plan to tackle this problem.

This summary report shares the vision for city-wide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) and the developed action and investment plans.

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 America.

Click for a longer version of this publication, which explains the resource planning and management function in more detail, on the basis of specific case studies.

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 version of this publication, which explains the accountability function in more detail, on the basis of specific case studies.