Ecological Sanitation

Many Governments and agencies in Africa are exploring the role of Ecological Sanitation (ecosan), within their current programmes for improving household environmental sanitation and hygiene.  There are strong convincing environmental and economic reasons for promoting ecosan in the developing world, but so far Africa acceptance of the technology has been limited.  The paper reviews experience in several countries in East and Southern Africa, Uganda inclusive.  The objective is to better understand why the take-up of ecosan has been limited in order to inform future improvements in the programme.  The review is mostly based on existing reports and sets out to identify as many successful programmes as possible in target countries in order to learn from their experiences.  The Uganda experience has been highlighted in the abstract.

As technical and socio-economic conditions vary from area to area, (shortage of land, different geological landscapes, ever growing school enrolment), it has been recognised that there is need for promotion of other design for excreta disposal, and not only the conventional pit latrine.  In addition, conventional pit latrines cause problems of ground water pollution thus threatening drinking water supply.  Ecological sanitation has been identified as one of the solutions to many of the above problems.  When successfully implemented, ecosan can cut down the need to continuously invest in latrine structure as they get filled up.  This will in the long run save money that can be used for other development activities for children.  The purpose of this booklet is to help districts and schools adopt ecological sanitation as a solution to the many sanitation challenges at schools and within the wider community.

The workshop was organised to develop guidelines for implementation of ecosan.  Inspite of its benefits, the ecosan toilet promotion had not received support from donors largely because of the negative peoples’ attitudes.  The concept and technology had not been properly internalised due to social and culture barriers.  The objectives of the workshop therefore, were to share experience on ecosan, and draw a strategy of how address the promotion challenges.  A number of presentations were made to share various project experiences.