Development of sanitation technologies in African context : how could we make it more sustainable?

Abstract

Access to sanitation technologies remains one of the biggest challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. To overcome this gap, a sanitation project called “Ameli-EAUR” translated from French as improvement of water and sanitation in urban and rural areas, was implemented in Burkina Faso for 5 years (2010-2016). The technologies from the project were designed on the basis of agro-sanitation concept, leading to package containing a composting toilet, a grey water treatment facility and a set of urine collection and treatment. The study aimed to evaluate of Ameli-EAUR project, one year after the end, and identify some key factors of sustainability of technologies. As methodology, a survey and a technical diagnostic of implemented technologies were done. The results showed that, the pilot families stopped using all the technologies one year after the end of the project. However, two main lessons can be learnt: (1) in term of efficiency and effectiveness of the project the technology of composting toilet was not robust enough, leading to a rapid abandonment after the project (2) in term of impact and sustainability, the economic incentive of the resource oriented sanitation concept was very weak compared to the needed workload. The technologies development in this kind of project should be carried on and associated with a more inclusive system driven by economic incentive.