Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene September 2018 Vol.13 No.4 | Page 14

Sanitation
Is shared sanitation the answer to
Maputo’s sanitation challenge?
Submitted by: Baghi Baghirathan Co-Author : Odete Duarte
Muximpua
covering the Nhlamankulu District and its eleven bairros,
which had shared sanitation – including shared household
and communal facilities – at its core. The program,
implemented by Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor
(WSUP) and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP)
of the World Bank, drew on lessons learnt from many
sanitation programmes in Africa and Asia demonstrating
the need for inclusion, stakeholder ownership and
sustainable management. This resonates with the current
shift towards Citywide Inclusive Sanitation, with a focus
on ensuring sustained service delivery rather than solely
building infrastructure.
With less than one in ten households connected to a
sewerage system and a lack of hygienic waste disposal and
treatment facilities for the remaining population, Maputo
reflects the reality in many cities across Africa and Asia.
Sanitation Blocks in Charmanculo
P
oor sanitation is the all too familiar story in many
expanding African cities and Mozambique’s capital
city Maputo is no exception. In fact, over half of the
country’s urban population lack access to even basic
sanitation. With an estimated 668 million city dwellers
around the world not having access to safe sanitation,
overcoming sanitation challenges in cities like Maputo
will go a long way towards achieving the Sustainable
Development Goal for safe sanitation (SDG 6.2).
But large numbers can sometimes obscure or make
abstract the tough reality for individuals and families.
The experience of Rute Rodrigues, a widow and mother
of five children living in one of many densely populated
low-income neighbourhoods (known locally as ‘bairros’)’
is a common one. As she recounts: “We had a precarious
latrine that over the course of time became damaged and
collapsed due to heavy rains leaving us without access to
even basic sanitation”.
The Maputo Municipal Council has been grappling with
this problem for the thousands of people like Rodrigues
living in the densely populated bairros. While individual
household toilets should always be the ideal, shared
sanitation can be an effective solution – and in some cases
the only solution – in densely populated low-income areas,
where lack of space precludes individual household toilets.
However, the risks of these being badly managed and
unhygienic are all too real.
Therein lay the challenge for the Maputo Peri-urban
Sanitation Project (MPSP) funded by the World Bank-
managed Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF)
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • September 2018
Improving access to safe sanitation meant including fecal
sludge management and hygienic sanitation behaviour
components in the MPSP. These were important
for embedding the shared sanitation facilities in the
community and for enhancing their sustainability.
The success, in terms of project outcomes, is largely
due to the project’s emphasis on promoting stakeholder
participation and ownership at all levels, from location
selection to community-led management of the shared
sanitation facilities. The training of community leaders
and local administration staff in the monitoring of water
and sanitation services, awareness creation/sanitation
promotion and in establishing user fee contribution
for both capital and maintenance costs, were great
sustainability enablers.
Enabling access to safe sanitation to 8,600 inhabitants,
including Rute Rodriguez and her children, in eleven
bairros, through 400 shared and communal facilities, is
another important outcome. With the new toilets, the
residents of Nhlamankulo felt a new sense of dignity, with
improved privacy and safety for women, and improved
access to sanitation for people with disabilities.
Sustainability and sense of ownership were also
strengthened by the participatory process and financial
contributions by the households. Equally valuable have
been the program lessons, which have influenced the
Sanitation and Drainage Master Plan for Maputo (2016-
2020) and helped to progress the introduction of a
planned sanitation tariff.
As envisaged, the shared sanitation facilities have given
more security and improved the well-being for women
and children in these densely populated bairros. The active
participation of women in the sanitation management