CLTS: What next?

Ugep town is not a major city but with a growing population over 120,000 it represents many growing urban areas of Africa. If sanitation facilities, and the attitude and behaviour towards hygiene can be changed in areas such as this, I feel that more top-down approaches such as large scale improvements in water supply by national or regional governments may have a chance of being successful in the long-term.

In similar towns such as Ugep town, Kisumu and Manyatta in Kenya, are more recent examples of more localised community based approaches to water while the city has continued to grow. Well water forms a huge part of the water supply and pit latrines are the main source of faecal disposal. The persistence of these own-key arrangement eventually led to the formalisation of the local council as a water representative for the region (Drangert at al., 2002: 361).

While privatisation may seem the most viable option, it has been studied that infact "privatisation fails to address some of the fundamentals constraints such as finance, the politicised nature of service delivery and lack of access to the poor" (Bayliss, 2003: 507).

While I am definitely an advocate for community based approaches to starting the improvement of health in growing urban areas, I do also feel that CLTS may not be an one-stop shop for success. To compliment this behavioural change encouraged by CLTS, I feel that complimentary approaches such as the Household-centred environmental sanitation approach (HCES) to provide structured planning to ensure the sustainability of basic services (Luthi et al., 2009: 61). The 10 step HCES approach, is an example of the community based approach, complimented with a formal structured approach that will allow it to be scaled provide long term assistance.

10 Step HCES approach (Luthi et al., 2009: 53)

Thank you for listening and I hope this gave you an insight into the issues associated with community based approaches and the scope for it to be scaled!

Reference List:

Bayliss, K. (2003) 'Utility Privatisation in Sub-Saharan Africa: a case study of water', The Journal of Modern African Studies, 41, 4, 507-531

Drangert J., J. Okotto-Okotto, L.G.O. Okotto and O. Auko (2002) 'Going Small When the City Grows Big New Options for Water Supply and Sanitation in Rapidly Expanding Urban Areas', International Water Resources Association, Water International, 27, 3, 354-363

Luthi, C., J. McConville and E. Kvarnstrom (2009) 'Community-based approaches for addressing the urban sanitation challenges', International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 1, 2, 49-63