First-of-its-kind sanitation roadmap

The sanitation challenges may be enormous, yet according to GRID-Arendal’s Elaine Baker, the challenges are not impossible to solve. Many of these problems are about changing human behavior, not about building fancy toilets and high-cost infrastructure. She says,

“One of the most effective interventions is hand washing. Better hand washing facilities can save 500,000 children in Africa alone.”

Baker, who is one of the authors of the Atlas, explains that finding solutions to help Africa meet the 6th Sustainable Development Goal starts with improved collaboration between all stakeholders.

“The Africa Sanitation and Wastewater Management Atlas, a joint initiative by GRID-Arendal, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that is currently being compiled, intends to play a facilitating role in this.”

The 9-chapter Atlas will be released later this year with the objective of sketching an accurate picture of the scope and scale of Africa’s wastewater and sanitation challenges, solutions and investment opportunities. She adds,

“There are individual studies about the links between wastewater and sanitation problems and various diseases, but no one has taken a comprehensive look at all the causes and implications of poor access to wastewater and sanitation in Africa.”

Economic cost of bad sanitation

The Atlas will serve as a guideline for policymakers and other stakeholders to drive change. Birguy Lamizana-Diallo, Programme Officer at the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Programme of Action (GPA), says:

"The Atlas is part of a dialogue, not an end-product. It will help us see the gaps and bottlenecks whilst giving us the input we need to change the way wastewater and sanitation services are delivered in Africa."

Poor access to toilets, hand washing facilities and clean drinking water is not just a humanitarian catastrophe that according to the World Health Organization (WHO) is claiming 115 African lives every hour. It also has severe economic consequences. In April this year, Ghana’s Minister of Sanitation and Water Resources, Cecilia Abena Dapaah, revealed that poor sanitation is costing the country USD 290 million per year. This equals USD 12 per person per year or 1.6% of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Baker says,

“Not having proper toilet facilities makes people sick, lose work or die prematurely. There is a huge healthcare cost involved in terms of lost productivity. It is much cheaper to prevent the illnesses than to cure people. A functioning toilet doesn’t have to be expensive. It just needs to be maintained.”