SCALING UP OF SANITATION IN TANZANIA PERI-URBAN

Various sanitation systems have been implemented in Tanzania since independence

although few places have an access to some form of sanitation facilities while the
larger part of the country remain without suitable sanitation facilities for their areas.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities does contribute to outbreak of communicable
diseases such as cholera which kills a number of people yearly.
Water supply, hygiene and sanitation promotion should be considered as interlinked
sectors. However, it is the traditional approach that treats each service as an
independent entity. This explicitly ignores the institutional/administrative, physical,
economic, environmental, and social interdependence between these services, very little
is done in terms of sanitation improvement and the bias is always to provide water
supply hardware. Whilst improved water supply may reduce the incidence of faecal-oral
diseases, other transmission routes require intervention through sanitation and hygiene
promotion. Programmes to promote linkage ie handwashing in sanitation are few and
far between.
Sanitation and hygiene promotion create demand for improved facilities and hence
scaling up of the programme. This is important because in some communities people
have been satisfied with current sanitation practices, albeit their nature, and they were
unfamiliar with suitable alternatives. The organization programmes has been tailoring
on promoting appropriate technologies that close the loop.

EEPCO have been engaging in sanitation promotion since 1995 through using the
following methods Increased Health and Hygiene Awareness to the community, social
marketing, and incentives as shown in fig 1. The organization was aiming at
determining workable processes whereby the needs of the community can be included
in the strategies which encourage promotion of sanitation through public-private
partnerships in the provision of sanitation services. Through undertaking project, it was
noted that sanitation drive strategies though it was successful requires modifications in
order to adapt it to the realities on the ground and make it more acceptable to users.
Initially Government technical officers were trained on the construction of latrine
components and dissemination strategies but the outcome could not pace up with the
project objectives.

In 1998 focusing on improving sanitation components for easy adaptation from

community, promotion were conducted in 7 districts and it was a success in the sense
that skills for local artisans, NGOs and local government personnel were supported and
strengthening. Local artisans established the latrine components production centre
where their community could easily access and select the technology to their
preference. The centres were also responsible for continue sanitation promotion at their
locality, provide training and installation of toilet to their communities to increase their
awareness of hygiene and hence sustainability of the program.

Scaling up could not be realized by then and the hygienic behaviuor towards sanitation
was lagging behind. The Ministry of Health, International agencies have stepped in to
ameliorate the situation somewhat. WSP, Unicef, Finland embassy, WASTE, WaterAid
and many more have supported the sanitation activities in various angles from capacity
building of stakeholders, practitioners and financing.

The 1999- Present: sanitation promotion strategy was adopted based on PHAST
methodology where by the links with hygiene, sanitation, water and environment were
covered during the training. PHAST methodology seeks to help communities:

 improve hygiene behaviours

 prevent diarrhoeal diseases
 Encourage community management of water and sanitation facilities.
It does this by: Demonstrating the relationship between sanitation and health status
increasing the self-esteem of community members empowering the community to plan
environmental improvements and to own and operate water and sanitation facilities.

The methods for achieving these goals are participatory methods and have been very
effective in stimulate demands from the community and increase the toilet coverage as
shown in the figure 3 below.

The PHAST methodology as used in the promotion of sanitation has shown good results
and already there is multiplier effect of the combination of with Sanitation Socio
Marketing to give the community more informed choices by changing individual
behaviour. The areas covered were Mpwapwa, Kongwa, Kilindi, Handeni, Rufiji,
Mvomero, Kilosa, Manyoni, Kiteto, Iramba Morogoro (R), Singida (R), Kondoa and
Igunga under collaboration of Ministry of Water and WSP Tanzania.

4500 45
4000 40
3500 35 Gov Personnel
3000 30 trained
2500 25 Local Artisans
2000 20
1500 15 Established
1000 10 production centre
500 5
Trainings
No. of

0 0
Sanitation Sanitation Sanitation
Drive Promotion promotion
with Fig. 1 Adopter trends with
different methodologies
PHAST
Technologies promoted

SanPlat, EcoSan and Emptying mechanism of pit latrines in unplanned areas, these
technologies have been promoted at household and institution levels. More than 10,000
SanPlat toilets have been installed in 17 districts of Tanzania; the activity is going on
where the new figure is expected to be 5600 by December 2007. PHAST and Socio
marketing in sanitation are used in combination to change the behaviuor of the
community at the same time giving the range of technologies to select as to their
preference. Communities’ face choice problems from many existing different sanitation
facilities; this may be due to lack of knowledge, willingness, affordability and durability
of these existing sanitation facilities and here is where EcoSan have gain acceptance.
500 unit units of EcoSan are expecting to be installed in 2008 through waste venture
fund approach.

Ecological sanitation is not a system, which is well known in Tanzania, although part of
its applicability might have been tried in some places without using the 'very'
terminology. In its loosely defined form by Morgan (1999), ecological sanitation is a
system that makes use of human "waste" and turns it into something "useful and
valuable", with minimum pollution of the environment. In essence, it consists of using
latrines, which are safe and ecologically sound and designed in such a way that the end
products can be easily transferred into agriculture or forestry

The Asian situation is totally different, as excreta have been handled for over a
thousand years making the societies faecalphilic (Missaar, 1997). There are even laws
about reuse like The Waste Management Law of 1988 in South Korea which stipulates
that night-soil must be treated and may not be applied to the land raw (Strauss &
Blumenthal, 1990).
Scaling of ecological sanitation at the household and institution levels has covered five
regions of Tanzania although the adoption of it is still lagging behind when comparing
to SanPlat technologies. A total of 3850 EcoSan units have been installed at household
level and 12 of 144 stances at institution levels (schools). Lack of availability of EcoSan
moulds at the local market outlets has been hampering the scaling up of the
technologies. EEPCO in liaison with other stakeholders are looking on the possibilities of
producing the moulds or pans locally which will enable the community artisans,
practitioners and other interesting parties to access or buying and installing for their
community health benefits. The programme has a research components of social
cultural aspects with the inputs of University of Dares salaam to show to the community
that the recycled nutrients has agronomic value
Viewing the existing management of human excreta in Tanzania, (Table 1) it is clear
that, there is a need to opt for reuse of the nutrients embedded in excreta and urine.
About 90% of the Tanzanians are using pit-latrines for disposal of their excreta.
Furthermore, it is believed that, 10% of the water supplied to the home ends up in pit-
latrines. The national statistics shows that, 92% of the urban population and 84% of
the rural population had latrines with questionable durability (Mzige, A. 2002).
 Table 1: 1National Coverage of Sanitation Facilities

Sanitation Facility Mainland Dar-es-Salaam Other urban Rural Zanzibar

Own Flush toilet 0.9(1.2) 2.6 3.2 0.2 1.1

Shared Flush toilet 0.4(0.5) 0.8 1.5 0.1 0.2

Improved pit latrine 1.3(1.1) 1.9 3.4 0.7 1.3

Traditional pit latrine 84.2(83.5) 92.1 88.8 82.4 41.3

No facility, bush 12.3(12.8) 1.8 2.2 15.7 56.2

Missing/do not know 0.9(0.8) 0.8 0.9 0.9 0.0

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Emptying dilemma: the data in table 1 shows that on-site sanitation will continue to
be the most widely utilized and low-cost option in low income urban areas. According to
Haskoning & M-Konsult (1989), about 50% of the pollution produced at domestic level
per capita per day, was estimated to be received by pit-latrines, and 33% of the original
COD remains in the water that infiltrates to groundwater. This shows that, urban
groundwater is both an asset and a problem. It is an asset because of its value for
water supply for drinking and industrial use. SanPlat, EcoSan and other tradition toilets
in urban has to consider urban water cycle management, in this view the emptying
logistic and reuse have to be foreseen. EEPCO have been taking into consideration the
end products of latrines using a small motorized Vacutug vacuum emptier capable of
operating in unplanned areas which cannot be serviced by wastewater agencies, the
Vacutug have shown the positive results by cutting the price of emptying by one-third
and decreasing by 62% of filled pit relocating. The machine was provided by
(UNHABITAT) for piloting the faecal sludge management from unplanned settlements of
Dar es salaam.

1
Source: Demographic and Health Survey (1992 & 1996), Bureau of Statistics, Planning Commission,
Ministry of Health, Tanzania.

Brackets ( ) means 1996 Survey figures

References

1) Demographic Health Survey (1992, 1996), Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania.

2) Haskoning and M-Konsult (1989), Study on Solid Waste Management and Pollution
caused by Sewerage systems in Dar es Salaam.

3) Missaar, M. (1997), Thesis on Human manure as organic fertilizer in nutrient – poor

agricultural systems Literature study, Deventer pp. 1

4) Morgan, P. (1999), Ecological Sanitation in Zimbabwe - A compilation of manuals

and experiences, Conlon Printers, pp.i – iii

5) Mzige, A. (2002), Ministry predicts dysentery, cholera outbreak, Sunday Newspaper

of March 10, Tanzania pp. 1 "(in press)".

6) Strauss, M. (June, 1999), Personal Communication, EAWAG - Switzerland.