Despite the urgent need for adequate water and sanitation services in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there are significant challenges in constructing development projects which provide sustainable solutions to existing problems. This post is going to describe these challenges and explore how they can be overcome.
Continuing on from last week, the first component of sustainability is effective community demand. The challenge with this is that despite the need for water and sanitation facilities being universal, the understanding of local demand for such needs is not well-known because documentation is limited. Facilitation processes are hindered due to a lack of physical and technical infrastructure in SSA communities. The second component is local financing and cost recovery. The lack of financial services poses a significant challenge. Often it discourages community members from partaking in water and sanitation activities. The third component is dynamic operation and maintenance (Montgomery et al., 2009). Unreliable and inefficient services can be a result of inadequate monetary awareness and planning and a distinct absence of accessible replacement parts or technical expertise (Hutton and Bartram, 2008).
Breaching the Barriers
Improving both access and sustainability of water and sanitation facilities in SSA is a difficult task that requires development practitioners, engineers, and policymakers to work together to assist communities in achieving their goals. In their paper, Montgomery et al. (2009) identify four steps which can be taken to overcome the challenges to establishing sustainability:
- Improving communication-idea transfer and stimulating behavior change – local priorities ought to be understood through demand assessments;
- Increasing access to capital and financial sustainability – making use of alternative means of borrowing and managing financial resources can assist communities in overcoming financial barriers;
- Establishing dynamic operation and maintenance practices – community members should play an important role in developing and enforcing an operation and maintenance plan; and
- Call for assessing sustainability in water and sanitation services – assessment of use is important to global aims and determining success of projects.
Headway towards realising and ideally exceeding the water and sanitation targets set out in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires those involved in improving the situation of access in SSA to alter their concentration from focusing solely on increasing infrastructure to focusing on attaining long-term practicality aims through improving operation and maintenance of existing systems.
SDG 6. Source: United Nations
The basic components of sustainability arguably provide a structure for involved actors to organise and apply water and sanitation enterprises. If the African population were to be equipped with the means to effectively and efficiently support water and sanitation systems, the outcome would be one of improved economic, health, and educational benefits. Montgomery et al. (2009) go as far as to suggest it would provide ‘future generations of Africans with a realistic opportunity to escape the devastating cycle of poverty.’
This blog has identified and critically assessed a number of possible solutions to development challenges regarding access and use of water and sanitation in SSA. There has been a focus on the urban and the challenges it faces, looking at case studies in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya), and Dakar (Senegal), among others. While the rapid growth of urban populations has amplified the demand for safe water and sanitation facilities, it is impossible for me to say whether this age has brought with it solutions which quash the tension between our growing needs and what the planet can provide.