How do ongoing initiatives and innovations define and respond to equitable urban sanitation? What is their capacity to tackle the sanitation taboo in-depth and at scale?

In her Anti-Crisis book, Janet Roitman provokes us to scrutinise the way we refer to ‘crises’, their moral architecture, political and economic imperatives and the ways in which the production of knowledge seeking to explain such crises might inadvertently reproduce cognitive objects that limit the possibility to think and act outside them. This is precisely one of the reasons why OVERDUE proceeds from the notion of the urban sanitation ‘taboo’ to examine what has been for decades referred to as an urgent global crisis. The way we speak about reality is not just a semantic exercise, it produces reality, history and future. While WP 1 and WP 2 excavate what commonalities and differences emerge in terms of sanitation landscapes, practices and experiences, Work Package 3 turns into ongoing experimentations with the capacity to build pathways towards equitable sanitation.

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How can policy and infrastructure interventions and grassroots practices be bridged to pursue equitable pathways in tackling the sanitation taboo across urban Africa?

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Work Package 3 expands our critical and propositive enquiry to a wider context by documenting, debating and evaluating emerging sanitation arrangements with the potential to bridge efforts and investments to tackle the sanitation taboo across Francophone, Lusophone and Anglophone colonial legacies and post-colonial contexts. The ultimate aim is to contribute towards opening up the visioning of “bridging” policy measures (how this is done and by whom) and practical solutions (what is working, for whom and why).

Work Package 3 engages with the broad constellation of institutions seeking innovative, inclusive pathways towards equitable sanitation across urban Africa. Through interactions with governments and international, national, and local organisations, including NGOs, foundations, dedicated investment funds, development banks and bi-lateral development partners, Work Package 3:

• creates a comprehensive register of ongoing sanitation initiatives, inviting a process of in-depth self documentation and assessment across colonial legacies and post-colonial situations;
• reflects on and distils the design principles of what constitutes ‘equitable sanitation’ across these initiatives;
• Facilitate exchange visits and discussions across the documented initiatives, institutions and providers which produce sanitation on the short and long term.

We generate expanded dialogue and capacities to support different pathways towards equitable urban sanitation. In addition to an open register and in-depth documentation of innovations, we develop and run a Co-learning space and regional campaign to stimulate new visions and ways of doing things that tackle the urban sanitation taboo.