By Tim Ndezi (CCI, Tanzania) and Claudy Vouhé (L’être égale, France)
OVERDUE partners from Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Senegal took part in a Knowledge Exchange visit in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar, from 18-23 June 2023, brilliantly organised by the project’s local partners: Simiralenta and Genre en Action. In this blog post, we delve into the concept of closing the loop and sanitation justice, based on the experiences we shared in the capital city.
What does closing the loop have to do with sanitation justice?
Sanitation justice is the equitable provision of adequate sanitation facilities and services for all. It is a critical aspect of human rights, social justice and gender equality. However, in many parts of the world, including both developing and developed countries, significant disparities in access to sanitation persist. In many countries, urban areas often receive more attention and resources. Rural areas are particularly disadvantaged, with limited infrastructure and resources to address sanitation challenges. Economic disparities perpetuate inequalities in sanitation access too: the poor and marginalized communities are disproportionately affected, as they lack the financial means to construct or maintain sanitation facilities.
Rapid urbanization has led to the proliferation of informal settlements and slums, where access to basic sanitation is severely limited for residents. Lack of secure tenure, inadequate infrastructure, and neglect by authorities contribute to unsanitary conditions in these areas. Open defecation and improper waste management pollute water bodies, soil, and air, causing environmental degradation. Inadequate sanitation contributes to poor health and hygiene, as it is tied to the spread of waterborne diseases, leading to high morbidity and mortality rates, particularly among children. Discrimination based on gender, race, caste, or disability further exacerbates all these inequalities.
Closing the sanitation loop involves creating a holistic system that integrates waste collection, treatment and reuse to maximize the benefits of sanitation, while minimizing its negative impacts. It aims to transform waste from a burden into a valuable resource, promoting a circular economy approach to sanitation. It ensures safe waste disposal, reduces contamination of water sources, and promotes good hygiene practices, thereby improving public health, minimizing pollution and preserving natural resources. Improved sanitation has far-reaching socio-economic benefits. It enhances human dignity, reduces healthcare costs, reduces women’s sanitation burden, improves productivity, and creates opportunities for economic growth and development. Closing the sanitation loop can generate income and employment through waste management and recycling initiatives. Closing the sanitation loop is of paramount importance to achieve just sanitation and sustainable development goals related to health, environment, and socio-economic progress.
Closing the loop in Antananarivo: Challenges and opportunities
Sanitation challenges in Antananarivo are significant and pose various issues to public health and environmental sustainability. As we visited selected sites in the city, we bore witnesses to a series of challenges, but also opportunities and successes.
On our visit to the popular neighborhood of Bassin Anatihazo, we saw how large off-grid urban areas lack access to basic sanitation facilities, including toilets and proper sewage systems. This results in open defecation practices and direct throwing of grey waters into a central canal built at the time of colonisation to serve “popular” neighborhoods. Today, despite attempts at cleaning the canal, imposing strict norms on new constructions (as demonstrated by the “Dignified homes for all” project) and renovating the neighborhood to include laundry areas and more water taps, the sanitation situation is still precarious for most residents, affecting their dignity and health (contaminated water sources pose serious health risks, particularly waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery) and impact the mental and workload of women particularly. Fee-paying public toilets now alleviate the situation somewhat though we heard that more men than women use them, mainly for economic reasons.
The fecal sludge treatment plants in the Mandrangombato and the Nanisana areas are proof that closing the loop is underway. The first plant is built in the very middle of the neighborhood, but we were assured that the residents’ participation in the construction, the pedagogy developed around the project as well as the night-only operating hours got rid of earlier expressions of fears and resistances. However, as our group walked the very narrow alleys to reach the station, we questioned the capacity of night workers pulling carts loaded with sludge packed in large plastic containers to feed the station to its full capacity. Both stations produce biogas, but so far, for staff daily use only. The autonomous municipal utility (SMA) coordinates sludge collection. Whilst SMA pit-emptiers are bound to use the treatment plants, too many private and informal emptiers do not contribute to closing the loop.
The initiative of LOOWATT, an NGO promoting the hiring of dry toilets at household level and collecting sludge as part of an agreement with SMA, is pointing in the right direction. Decentralized and low-cost technologies such as composting toilets, biogas digesters, and wastewater treatment systems that are affordable and simple to operate, can significantly contribute to closing the sanitation loop. Initiatives to close the sanitation loop should support sanitation entrepreneurs and civil society organisations, who drive innovation and local solutions in sanitation services, such as toilet construction and maintenance, waste collection, and recycling, thereby creating employment opportunities and improving sanitation access.
The highlight of the visit was the inauguration of an on-site treatment plant at the Antanjombe Nord public primary school which was rehabilitated as part of the OVERDUE project. The project has involved multiple partners, including school students and parents. It was endearing to see girls and boys playing out short theatrical pieces that talked openly about toilets and defecation. This came to remind us that limited awareness about the importance of proper sanitation practices and hygiene contributes to the persistence of sanitation challenges. Closing the loop is no exception. The school now has an autonomous on-site treatment plant with the capacity to treat sludge to produce biogas to be used in the rehabilitated canteen as well as compost for the school garden.
A craving for closing the loop?
When our team met with Naina Andriantsitohaina, the Mayor of Greater Antananarivo, just sanitation and closing the loop came out as political priorities, though limited financial resources are clearly an issue to tackle the inadequate infrastructure hindering the development and maintenance of proper sanitation systems in the city. Bridging gender gaps – in the gender division of roles, access to resources, leadership, professional sanitation careers etc. – came up strongly in the conversation. Antananarivo has its own Gender Policy and our team argued that closing the loop and promoting just sanitation should feature strongly as part of the gender plan.
Closing the sanitation loop is not only a vital step in addressing the sanitation crisis in Antananarivo but also a sustainable approach that can benefit communities, protect the environment, and drive economic growth for all including women. In Antananarivo and across African cities, integrating waste collection, treatment, and reuse can transform sanitation challenges into opportunities. By investing in improved infrastructure, raising awareness, implementing sustainable waste management practices, and exploring innovative solutions, Madagascar and other developing countries can pave the way for a brighter and healthier future and be able to transform sanitation from a challenge into an opportunity for sustainable development.
Our knowledge exchange in Antananarivo was a great opportunity to collect local views from multiple stakeholders to feed into the Call for Action initiated by the project: We C.R.A.V.E. #JustSanitation4AfricanCities.