{"id":2968,"date":"2019-06-07T07:21:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T07:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=2968"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:20","slug":"nigeria-needs-a-more-effective-sanitation-strategy-here-are-some-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/06\/07\/nigeria-needs-a-more-effective-sanitation-strategy-here-are-some-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria Needs a More Effective Sanitation Strategy. Here Are Some Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Story by The Conversation<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November last year, Nigeria declared<\/a> that\nits water supply, sanitation and hygiene sector was in crisis. This was partly\nprompted by the fact that the country has struggled to make progress towards\nending open defecation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost one in four<\/a> Nigerians\n\u2013 around 50 million people \u2013 defecates in open areas. They do so because access\nto proper sanitation, like private indoor toilets or outdoor communal toilets,\nhas not improved in recent years. In fact, it\u2019s got worse: in 2000, 36.5%<\/a> of Nigerians had access to sanitation facilities\nthat hygienically separate human excreta from human contact. By 2015 the figure\nhad dropped to 32.6%, likely driven by rapid population growth<\/a> and\na lack of sufficient private and public investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open defecation comes with many risks. It can lead to\nwaterborne diseases, cause preventable deaths, and hamper education and\neconomic growth. It also infringes on people\u2019s privacy and dignity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government has tried several strategies to address\nthis problem. In 2008 it adopted an intervention called \u201cCommunity Led Total\nSanitation\u201d. This is a community-level intervention aimed at reducing open\ndefecation and improving toilet coverage. It draws in community leaders and\nordinary residents so they can understand the risks associated with open\ndefecation. By 2014 the intervention was deployed in all 36 Nigerian<\/a> states,\ncovering around 16% of the country\u2019s 123,000 communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wanted to know how effective the programme has been,\nif at all. So we conducted a study<\/a> and found that community-led total sanitation\nprogrammes alone will not eradicate the practice of open defecation. But they\ncould be part of the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that the programme currently works quite well in\npoor communities but is less effective in richer places \u2013 that is, places with\nhigher average ownership rates of assets such as fridges, motorcycles, TVs,\nsmartphones and power generators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poorer communities distinguish themselves from richer\nones in other ways, too. They tend to have higher levels of trust among their\ncitizens, lower initial levels of toilet coverage and lower wealth inequality.\nBut none of these characteristics is, on its own, as strong a predictor of\nwhere the intervention works better than community wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low community wealth is a simple measure that encompasses\nall these different features, and is associated with greater programme\neffectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intervention<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Community-led total sanitation typically starts with\nmobilization. This initially involves community leaders and then, through them,\ncommunities more broadly. Then, a community meeting is held at which residents\ntypically start by marking their household\u2019s location and toilet ownership\nstatus on a stylized map on the ground. They also identify and mark regular\nopen defecation sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facilitators use the map to trace the community\u2019s\ncontamination paths of human faeces into water supplies and food. A number of\nother activities may follow, such as walks through the community that are often\nreferred to as \u201cwalks of shame\u201d during which visible faeces are pointed out, to\nevoke further disgust and shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another common activity involves calculating medical\nexpenses related to illnesses that are caused by open defecation practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2015 we worked with the charity organization, WaterAid Nigeria<\/a> and\nlocal government agencies in the states of Ekiti and Enugu to design a field\nexperiment in areas with no recent experience of community led total\nsanitation, or similar interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The community-led total sanitation programme was\nimplemented in a random sample of 125 out of 247 clusters of rural communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To study the intervention\u2019s effectiveness, we interviewed\n20 randomly selected households before community-led total sanitation took\nplace. We followed up with these households eight, 24 and 32 months after the\nintervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that the programme\u2019s roll-out didn\u2019t lead to any\nchanges in sanitation practices in richer communities. But it worked in the\npoorest communities. The prevalence of open defecation declined by an average\nof nine percentage points in poorer communities when compared to other poor\nareas where the programme wasn\u2019t implemented. This drop was accompanied by a\nsimilar increase in toilet ownership rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impact depends on wealth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our results are in line with observations<\/a> by\nthe designers of the programme. But we are the first to show quantitatively\nthat community asset wealth is a good predictor of whether the intervention can\nbe expected to be successful. Unfortunately, our data does not allow us to pin\ndown why households in poorer communities are more susceptible to the\nprogramme. However, these results have important implications for more cost\neffective targeting of the programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most countries, including Nigeria, have access to readily available data<\/a>from\nhousehold surveys that can be used to measure how asset-poor a community is.\nThese data can be used to identify and target communities where community-led\ntotal sanitation is likely to have the biggest impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eradicating open defecation is not just a Nigerian\npriority. Today, an estimated 4.5 billion people globally<\/a> don\u2019t have access to safe sanitation. So we also\nlooked at data and research about this same intervention from other parts of\nthe world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Community-led total sanitation intervention was first\ndeveloped in Bangladesh<\/a> in\n1999. It has now been implemented in more than 25 Latin American, Asian and\nAfrican countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We used information from evaluations of this intervention\nin Mali, India, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Indonesia. The studies found widely\ndiffering impacts. These ranged from a 30 percentage point increase<\/a> in toilet ownership in Mali to no\ndetectable impact<\/a> on toilet\nownership in Bangladesh. Using a measure of wealth for these countries, we\nfound that sanitation interventions have larger impacts in poorer areas, such\nas Tanzania, and low or no impact in relatively richer areas, such as\nIndonesia. This supports the idea that targeting poorer areas maximizes the\nimpact of community led total sanitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our research shows that while community-led total\nsanitation is effective in Nigeria\u2019s poorer areas, there are two main\nchallenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, community-led total sanitation had no perceivable\nimpact in the wealthier half of our sample. There, open defecation remains\nwidespread. And second, even in poor areas, a large number of households still\nengaged in open defecation after the intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This suggests that while community-led total sanitation\ncan be better targeted, it needs to be complemented with other policies \u2013\nsubsidies, micro-finance or programmes that promote private sector activity in\nthis under-served market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read original story here>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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