Partnerships in the seven rapidly urbanising and spatially expanding cities of Beira, Mwanza, Freetown, Abidjan, Antananarivo, Bukavu, and Saint-Louis ground our exploration of sanitation inequalities and pathways towards inclusive sanitation in urban Africa. Current annual population growth rates for these cities are in the range of 3 to 5%, with most residents living in informal circumstances within central city and peri-urban areas. The spatial and administrative divisions and inter-relations within each city and between the city and its region, the grid/off-grid distinction, and the place of marginalised populations for each case, will contribute to our understanding of sanitation trajectories.
These paths have been shaped by highly inequitable and typically segregated colonial legacies in land tenure, urban planning, housing and infrastructure service provision, and by their current sites within national political economies and ensuing governance dynamics. A key infrastructural divide can be identified for each city between the existence and limited coverage of sewerage systems and far more preponderant on-site sanitation facilities (notably pit latrines, and septic tanks). Access to on-site sanitation is nonetheless limited, and open defecation still widespread.
Each city has seen, in recent years, to different degrees, either actual investment in sanitation services or renewed interest in providing such investment and the preparatory activities (sanitation studies, masterplans) required.
