We will soon be holding a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya on 26-28 June. A range of delegates have been invited and we’re hoping for a lively exchange of experience and ideas. The main focus of the workshop will be to identify best practices in urban WASH programming that will enable governments, practitioners, donors and decision-makers to design better interventions for bringing lasting services to all urban consumers.
A key part of the ACF program is to develop the capacity of the main water supply providers in helping them provide services to low-income urban communities. One of the ways we’ve found works well is to facilitate exchange visits between African utilities, to learn from each other and build a sense of solidarity whilst growing confidence in being able to serve this hard to reach consumer-segment of the population.
In March 2012, ACF facilitated a visit by Managers of Ghana Urban Water Company and the regulator PURC to Nairobi Water Company in Kenya and Lusaka Water Company in Zambia. The purpose of the visit was for the Ghanaian delegates to learn from their Kenyan and Zambian counterparts in structuring their organization and capacity needs to serve low income communities. The delegates visited low-income areas of Nairobi and Lusaka, looking at different service delivery models that the water utilities have demonstrated in partnership with WSUP, including delegated management models, water kiosks, multi-service latrine blocks, low-cost sewerage, to name a few.
Water company staff from Ghana visiting water kiosks in Nairobi’s informal settlements
All the participants engaged in lively debate, sharing lessons learnt, including such things as the number one priority of early community engagement before any service improvements take place, reflecting the need for sociological capacity within the company, not just technical capacity. They talked about the need to spread the costs of connection charges into the tariff to overcome the high upfront cost barrier faced by the poor. Also a common theme was the need to improve communications with low-income consumers, particularly about how electricity outages effect the quality of supply.
An example of NCWSC getting closer to their customers
Staff of Ghana Urban Water Company reported a number of concrete steps they would take home with them. The need for a specific pro-poor department surfaced strongly, and ACF will continue to support this dialogue within the Company.
We have been working hard to share the successes and challenges of the ACF program with the global community. The Annual Report for the second year of the program is now ready to share. Click on the ‘Documents’ tab above and select to download either the Executive Summary or the full report. Feedback and questions are of course strongly invited (details on the ‘Contact’ page). This report will be of interest to governments figuring out viable ways to connect all citizens to formal service providers, to practitioners wanting to understand the best ways to support the vibrant private sector to deliver these services, or anyone shocked by the statement below and wanting to learn howWSUP are addressing the challenge of an urbanising Africa.
Urban areas will account for 83.5% of Africa’s population growth between now and 2050, while rural areas will account for 16.5% of growth in the same period.*
Calculated from data in UN Habitat (2008) The State of the African Cities Report 2008: A Framework for Addressing Urban Challenges in Africa
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 42 trips to carry that many people.
Celeste heads the committee that manages this communal sanitation block for the neighbourhood
I met Celeste Mavia by the small communal sanitation block which she manages in her quarterao, or neighbourhood. She talked with purpose as she proudly showed me how well the 35 households in her quarterao were paying their contributions regularly. She spoke first in halted Portuguese, but continued with my colleague in her local dialect of Changana. She spoke of the appalling, dank, shed of a latrine her and her community had previously had to put up with; where flies would fly in as you made your way into the stinking dark space. With only a torn sheet to cover them from passers-by, the toilet was not the place where women would want to go, perhaps using a plastic bag in the night and throwing it with the rubbish.
This sanitation block had been constructed by WSUP to demonstrate how low-cost sanitation could be built by the municipality in this dense housing area. It provides two toilets each for men and women plus a wash cubicle. A 1500 litre water tank sits on the roof to capture water from the mains supply which comes alive for only four hours each morning. Celeste scrutinises the costs like a business woman rather than as one might expect for “communal” facilities. She heads the committee that meets regularly to review the income and expenditure, seeing what the meter reading says and working out on average how much each household is taking for their water needs. They’ve decided for now to make it a fixed monthly cost of 60 metacais for each household – a little over $2.25 per house – which currently more than covers the water bill each month, but also contributes to a fund they’re building up for the bigger maintenance costs that are expected to come in the following year, like de-sludging the septic tank.
Right now, WSUP agreed to let the quarterao decide their own tariff, and would monitor results with Celeste on a regular basis. What’s apparent is that the close-knot community structure of the bairros exerts an exceptional force on everyone to contribute. Celeste described an incident when a household refused to clean the toilets, like everyone else was doing on a rota basis. The committee met and decided to report it to the Secretary of the Bairro, who then brought the issue up at a meeting with all Quarterao leaders of the bairro and soon everyone knew that the family would not clean their quarterao toilets. The family was therefore embarrassed into agreeing to do their fair share.
Nonetheless, the toilets look very well maintained as does the entire cluster of houses in which this toilet block is located. She says that people used to get quite sick, and when only a corrugated iron sheet separated you from your neighbours home, everyone would know when someone was sick. But people don’t get sick so often since the toilet block was built six months ago.
Celeste is unique in that she’s female and she’s a local leader. She’s highly respected by the others in her Quarterao but as she tells me, she had to earn her respect. She’s the head of her family, meaning her husband has either left her, has died or is working out of the city. She says you have to know how to speak to your neighbours and how to conduct yourself with more senior leaders of the community. She’s a beacon of inspiration to other women around her, and as my colleagues tell me, she’s inspired other women to speak out which has created momentum amongst other women in the bairro.
Christina Chilvane is the Deputy Head of Unidade 16 primary school in Xipamanine bairro inMaputo. Teachers here have a demanding day: her school with only 6 classrooms eases 850 students through their doors in 3 shifts of 3.5 hours over a 12 hour day. I visited her school when they were getting together to mark the first day of construction for the school’s new toilet block. As part of demonstrating management models that share O&M responsibilities between government and community, this project was also feeding essential financial data into citywide sanitation plans.
Every member of the school’s Council had turned up to mark the occasion: the Director of the school, the Secretary of the Bairro, the deputy headmistress, a representative of the Fathers of the school, members of the health sub-committee, the school cleaners and a few other people I didn’t catch. I picked up on a strange sense of relief on many of their faces and the subtle jokiness that you get when they’ve spent some time with others in a team. Christina told me this was because of the many planning sessions and organisational meetings that they had been through together. Only some of these had been convened by WSUP, who provided training in health and hygiene, menstrual hygiene management, gender awareness, and financial planning, along with expected maintenance scheduling of the toilet block. Other meetings they called by themselves to ensure that they avoided what they had been living with day in day out for the last few years.
Standing there in the school yard was a broken water system. Not a big surprise, since school water and sanitation facilities are probably one of the most common types to fail in the developing world (interesting debate on the subject here.)
It was a simple holding tank connected by a pump to an over head tank that fed a handwashing station, the toilet block and a yard tap. No one knew the details of its demise as it had been like that for as long as any of them could remember. And despite endless calls for the municipality to fix it, their calls were never answered.
After speaking with a few of the school council members, I felt upbeat about the longevity of this toilet block. Quite surprising to me was that the school received two government employed school cleaners to keep these toilets clean. Christina told me that she made sure they did a good job. But if she wasn’t satisfied, did she have any way of reporting her dissatisfaction to local government? No, she simply said she would pull them over to where they’d missed out and stood by them until they finished the job properly!
They also received some funds from the local government for general maintenance about the school. But they knew this wasn’t enough, after factoring in the future costs of maintenance such as desludging the septic tanks, painting the walls, re-plastering, fixing taps, etc. They also knew about the cost of delaying these maintenance tasks, as maintaining a pump regularly was cheaper than replacing a pump early because of no servicing. They also received contributions from the family of each child attending the school – and any shortfall would be found from other sources. They didn’t know where yet, but at least they knew how much they needed to find from other sources. And this to me was key: empowered with this information, they were a meaningful voice to the local government who might actually stop and listen to this informed school Council. I was happy that they were aware of this before accepting what was in effect a maintenance liability for their school. They had made this rational decision for the obvious health advantages that this facility gave their children.
The tradition is to mark the very start of a new building project with a celebration. We gave a big “cheers” as the cork went flying from the fizzy wine – and it was only 11am!! I felt confident that this would mark the start of a long, well maintained toilet block supporting a healthy environment for kids getting a good start in life – the right of every child.
An important part of improving water services to poor urban areas is strengthening low-income consumers’ ability to demand better services. This is required to overcome vested interests that actively discourage improvements, such as unregulated water vendors who charge a high price or public officials who want to protect their alternative sources of revenue. It is often the case that policies lack incentives or obligations to serve the poor, so structures are needed to help the poor take action on their own.
See below for some examples of how the ACF program is helping poor urban consumers to be heard.
In Madagascar…
WSUP has been helping to organise communities by supporting the establishment of Water User Associations (WUA) who sign a contract to operate water kiosks in poor districts, or Fokontany. These WUAs join together to form a WASH Committee, called RF2 (Rafitra Fikojana ny Rano sy ny Fahadiovana), that uses revenues from water kiosks to finance fokontany-wide WASH improvements. These have included clearing drainage canals to prevent flooding, street cleaning to prevent blocked drains, and promoting the benefits of household latrines. The RF2 model is being used by the Municipal Hygiene Office (BMH) in 13 other fokontany in addition to the 8 supported by WSUP with no external support. The connection between pro-poor service expansion and urban health has also been recognised by water utility JIRAMA who has now prioritised connection works for poor community water supplies. This shows that demonstrating pro-poor approaches leads to real institutional change.
In Mozambique…
Committees have been formed to manage communal sanitation blocks in poor neighbourhoods, or quartiers. These are overseen by Water and Sanitation Commissions setup at the district level, or bairrro, by local leaders to monitor these committees and coordinate other water and sanitation development needs of the community. Whilst this bairro-level committee is in its infancy, it represents a first step in poor consumers organising themselves to demand better services. As of only a month ago, this W&S Commission has initiated a survey to understand their community’s water and sanitation needs so a more meaningful discussion can be had with city authorities.
In Kenya…
Water User Associations were formed in urban poor settlements around Lake Naivasha to coordinate project implementation activities. After commissioning of the water supply system, the WUAs registered as legally-recognised Community Based Organisations to oversee proper functioning of the system. The WUA is formally identified in contractual documents, including an asset transfer agreement that empowers it to report customer complaints to the utility Naivawass and gives it a seat on the utility’s board. A positive outcome is that the WUA now convene’s its own meetings, share’s reports with other stakeholders, manages issues with private water operators and identifies solutions in partnership with the formal utility. The WUA is now investigating whether it could take on other community functions as well, around sanitation, solid waste and other issues.
In Nairobi…
Neighbourhood committees have been formed in Soweto West, Gatwekera and Kisumu Ndogo where the ACF project is focussed. These committees monitor water kiosk operators, report leakages, ensure water storage tanks are cleaned by the vendors and generally promote this formalised method of water service delivery amongst community members. A macro-level platform for the poor is through the NGO Forum which was established to improve coordination between NGOs, the asset owner AWSB and the utility NCWSC, in particular the Informal Settlement Department which was created by the utility to focus directly on service provision to informal areas. This forum has been useful for the utility to understand the tricky aspects of water service delivery to informal areas, and dispel myths amongst the community, for example, who initially felt that they should own new assets. The NGO Forum helped to convey the benefits of central ownership and management of facilities. See an example of a promising World Bank consumer pressure group pilot in Kenya which helped to resolve a huge number of customer complaints with the utility http://go.worldbank.org/4S94SGQQ40
In Ghana…
A Community Management Committee has been formed to take on a service contract with the utility, GWCL, for the operation of a decentralised water supply system on the outskirts of Kumasi city. Representation on the CMC is by nomination from traditional rulers, opinion leaders, women’s groups, the youth club, the sub-metropolitan council, GWCL and local politicians. The CMC is now the community focal point for communications with the utility, and obligations of both parties are being formalised in clear forms of contract. Interestingly, mistrust by the community initially created wide apathy for demanding better services from the utility. By requiring the community and the utility to work together in project planning activities, a proactive working culture has built mutual trust between both parties.
In Mali…
Management committees have been established at each new tapstand with locally elected members from the surrounding community. The management committee is given the responsibility by the local government, or Commune, for managing the tapstand and are required to meet periodically to overcome any issues. The ACF program is providing management and financial training to the committee through the Commune, with the intention that the Commune will provide this for new management committees as services expand to other areas. On a recent visit to the Commune’s office, the 3rd Deputy Mayor responsible for tapstands showed us the committee leader’s telephone number in his phone, as a means of demonstrating that he hears from them often, perhaps suggesting that the community’s are indeed holding their service providers to account…. even more so perhaps, from the increase of mobile phones in Africa.
The challenge of sustainable services is often greatest in cities around the world. In some areas, utilities are unable to deal with the increasing number of illegal connections that prevent vendors selling water at regulated prices, and enable illegal sellers to sell at prohibitively high prices that many cannot afford. In others, high tech wastewater treatment plants fail because operators lack the capacity to maintain them and tariffs are inadequate to support the high cost of repairs. In others still, there is little or no public oversight for non-networked sanitation systems, leaving sludge from latrines and septic tanks to end up in rivers or open drains where children play or women wash clothes. When the number of child deaths from diarrhea-related diseases stay despairingly high, the value of sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions become overwhelmingly clear.
Testing a sludge hand pump in a Nairobi slum which will give families a viable way to empty their pit latrines when they fill up. Currently, families must pay prohibitively high costs to local pit emptiers who use unsanitary methods, forcing them into a loss of dignity by reverting to open defecation, which in turn creates health problems for the community.
Today marks the launch of the WASH Sustainability Charter. Over 20 organisations, including WSUP, have endorsed this charter as a set of guiding principles that advance sustainable solutions in WASH.
WSUP, under the African Cities for the Future program, has and will continue to work towards these principles over the life of this grant and for years to come. By working in partnership with local service providers, we are ensuring that ‘beneficiaries’ reported today will be valued customers for generations to come.
I invite you to endorse the Charter and join this movement.
Click here to read the Charter and join the movement.
People living in the low income informal urban areas of Ghana are more reliant on public latrines than similar communities anywhere else in the world. In Kumasi, the second city of Ghana, where the ACF programme is underway, it is estimated that 60% of the approximately 2 million population visits a public latrine at least once per day.
While there are some excellent examples in Kumasi of high standard public latrines many fall way below what can be considered to be acceptable. Not only are many of the facilities of very poor quality they are also badly maintained, but despite this they are such an essential part of the sanitation provision of the city that at peak times, such as early morning, people have to queue for hours to use them.
WSUP, under the ACF programme, has been working with the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) to develop approaches that will bring about city wide improvements in the quality of public latrines and the service that they provide.
In December 2010 WSUP arranged for David Kuria from Ecotact in Kenya to visit Kumasi and share the approach that he has developed in Kenya with a range of key stakeholders in Kumasi. This visit has had a significant positive impact in Kumasi and David Kuria’s approach has become the reference point for discussions within the municipal authority on improvements to public sanitation blocks within the city. A local Bank has also shown a lot of interest in the possibility of providing loans for the rehabilitation or construction of latrine blocks. Following the David Kuria model a large new public latrine has recently been constructed in one of the large markets areas in central Kumasi.
Attendees at David Kuria's workshop included the Mayor, members of the Metropolitan Assembly, staff of the Waste Management Dept (WMD), local business men and representatives of a local commercial bank
Waste management staff at the KMA do not have a definitive list of all the latrine blocks that exist in Kumasi and has no detailed picture of the condition of the facilities. In close collaboration with the KMA the ACF programme is about to award a contract for the mapping of all the public latrine blocks in Kumasi. This will provide a detailed picture of what is where, what facilities are available at each location, what particular management arrangement each block is operating under, and it will also provide an estimate of the number of users per day.In a recent interview with a staff member at the waste management department, it was learnt that A comprehensive policy change has already occurred as a direct outcome of the visit by David Kuria.
Urban Health Updates
