SA Affordable Housing July - August 2019 // Issue: 77 | Page 31

INDUSTRY MATTERS
Dhesigen Naidoo speaks about the current African backlog, which is primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, that is estimated at 570 million
people who don’t yet have access to improved sanitation.
and ingenuity to meet both the SDGs and lay the foundations
of sustainable development within this framework.
REVOLUTIONISING SANITATION
Fortunately, we have already achieved some important
starting points, one is sanitation. The Water Research
Commission together with its local and international
partners, many working under the banner of the Gates
Foundation Reinvent the Toilet programme, have developed a
suite of cutting-edge innovative technologies and solutions
that can potentially revolutionise sanitation.
These state-of-the-art technologies share the following
characteristics firstly, they are designed to use less than a
litre of water per flush while some use no water at all.
Secondly the engineering genius at the back end means
on-site or decentralised safe and hygienic treatment of
waste. This means financial savings in construction costs as
the kilometres of massive sewerage pipelines as well as large
wastewater treatment plants are no longer needed.
This goes along with the saving of vast quantities of water
that convey human waste vast distances to the treatment
works as required by the current model. In addition, the huge
energy savings in the treatment works themselves and you
have already an amazing trinity of efficiencies in water,
power and money – precisely in the areas of greatest scarcity
on the continent.
www.saaffordablehousing.co.za
The boon does not stop there; add to the this the
beneficiation of waste on site, which ranges from using the
waste in basic ways like fertilisers and first level energy
source through biochar, to more sophisticated value
addition through biogas capture, protein and lipid
extraction and you have the beginnings of an innovative
21st century industrial value chain.
With this comes the promise of greater economic
growth, enterprise development and job creation. This
facilitates our ability as a continent to meet our SDG goals
and create the mechanisms for our partners in Asia, Latin
America and other parts of the global south to be able do
the same.
If we manage to achieve this, we will introduce a model
for low cost, high beneficiation, low water, low energy and
of course concomitantly low carbon sanitation. If we go
further than the SDGs to making this a pivot point to
revolutionise sanitation provision with large scale adoption,
meaning the conversion in the global north as well, then we
have the bedrock of true sustainable development.
Africa will indeed have brought forth something new,
which is better phrased as former President Thabo Mbeki
reminds us, ‘Semper aliquid novi Africa affert’.
Let us, in this Africa Month 2019, re-engage the
possibility of the African century where this continent leads
the shaping of a better Africa and a better world.
JULY - AUGUST 2019
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