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water supply & sanitation map in Africa

During a recent trip to the GTZ office of the “sustainable sanitation – ecosan” program in Eschborn, Germany, I stumbled upon the following interesting map that display various international NGOs working on water supply & sanitation issues in Africa.

download this map as a PDF (0.1 MB)

Steffen Blume of GTZ-ecosan, who created this map for his colleagues at work & agreed to share this with us, kindly asks for some feedback in return. So if you’re active or know of an active NGO within the water / sanitation sector that isn’t listed here, please directly send your feedback to Steffen Blume or kindly use the comment form below. Thank you!

DEWATS Service Packages

BORDA announced in their DEWATS newsletter (March 2009) an interesting new tool for decentralised wastewater treatment solutions (DEWATS). According to BORDA, the service packages includes not simply the construction of hardware but a whole set of integrated measures which are combined according to demand. The following topics are covered:

• School Based Sanitation
• Community Based Sanitation
• Emergency Sanitation
• Sanitation for Hospitals & Hotels
• Sanitation for Agro-Industry
• Sanitation for Prisons
• Real Estate Sanitation
• Sludge Treatment Plant
• Health Impact Assessment & Hygiene Education
• Sanitation Mapping
• Capacity Development

new GTZ ecosan newsletter published

As admin and co-editor of the GTZ ecosan newsletter – a quarterly newsletter on ecological and sustainable sanitation – I am pleased to announce the publication of the latest edition no. 31 from April 2009.

The German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) recently introduced a new newsletter mailing tool which enables the ecosan program within GTZ to refocus on the actual content of each newsletter and at the same time highlight some sustainable sanitation projects that are partly funded by the German government and other donors.

The newsletter is available for download as a PDF file (0,4 MB) and may be subscribed to on this page (which also offers other interesting GTZ newsletters). An archive of previous editions is also available on the (relaunched) website of the GTZ ecosan program.

New sanitation planning tools in IYS 2008

The call for better planning and long-term sustainability in sanitation projects is understandable considering still 2.5 billion people unserved with improved sanitation (and probably the same amount with non-sustainable sanitation). The UN International Year of Sanitation 2008 is chosen by several initiatives as the most appropriate time for publishing new guidelines and planning tools for sanitation.

The new fact sheet of the SuSanA working group “Sustainable Sanitation for cities and planning” summarizes the 3 most important planning documents: Sanitation 21 (IWA), HCES – Household Centred Environmental Sanitation (WSSCC/Eawag-Sandec) and SSA – Strategic Sanitation Approach (WSP). The fact sheet can be downloaded here: http://www.susana.org/images/documents/05-working-groups/wg06/final-docs/en-susana-factsheet-WG06-planning-version-1.1.pdf.

The Austrian Development Agency (ADA) in cooperation with the EcoSan Club has published a brochure on planning principles “Solutions in Sanitation – Planning Principles”. The publication is available as download: http://www.entwicklung.at/en/service/publikationen/folder-und-broschueren.html. That link offers also the possibility to order hard copies.

Furthermore NETSSAF also published a participatory planning tool which was distributed at the final conference of the network “Pathways towards Sustainable Sanitation in Africa” in September 2008 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It will be available soon at the webpage of the network.

new toilet facilities at Muyogoro Primary School, Rwanda

Alexandra from Rwanda Village Concept Project (Rwanda VCP) wrote in the other day to inform us of an ecosan toilet that Rwanda VCP built at Muyogoro primary school in Rwanda earlier this year:

“From our work on malaria education in the village of Mpungwe and Muyogoro Primary School, we have noted that the current level of hygiene constitutes a significant danger to public health. We are providing adequate sanitation facilities for children through ecosan toilet construction at their primary schools after seeing that the existing ones can be a danger to the children health and the environment. (…) On Monday, December 17 2007, the construction started at Muyogoro primary school, located in Huye District, Nyakagezi subsector. This construction has been realised in partnership between RVCP, 2 International Participants and BVDA.”

click here to view the complete gallery

The Rwanda Village Concept Project is an international student-run project in Central Africa. This multidisciplinary development project was initiated in 1998 whereas the fieldwork started in 2002. Its aims are to improve the living standards in a Rwandan community by using simple and low cost methods and to develop the capabilties of students in participatory development work.

Dominik of pong.li was invited to cover the construction process with his camera and created these wonderful videos (full playlist on YouTube):

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“People in this area just came together to build that public infrastructure…”