Sanitation Crisis In Africa: “No Data on Hygiene and 0.5% of GDP to Sanitation not met,” 2018 Progress Report on Ngor Commitments shows.

By Diana Coker (Capte Town, South Africa)

The first ever joint Africa Sanitation (AfricaSan5) and Feacal Sludge Management (FSM5) Conference held in Cape Town, South Africa from the 18th to 22^nd February 2019, was an important gathering of all stakeholders that contribute to sanitation within the continent and was designed to positively impact the lives of people by ensuring that their sanitation and hygiene needs are adequately and sustainably addressed.

The event attracted government representatives, researchers, investors, innovators and other sector players across the continent who interfaced, formed partnerships in order to ensure that the ideas and knowledge gained from each other will be adequately utilized for the good of people in need of Sanitation services. South Africa was chosen as an ideal country for the event because of the innovative approach to sanitation related issues within the continent.

President of the Africa Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), Emmanuel Tony Ondo in his address to participant affirmed that the conference was a significant milestone of a long journey that African countries have embarked on for almost 20yrs ago in a bid to prioritize sanitation and hygiene in both global and national development

He recalled that AfricaSan process can be traced back from 2002 when it was first held in South Africa and their biggest achievement was to successfully lobby the development community through UNEP and the United Nations to adopt a specific development target for sanitation which was captured in the Millennium Development Goals, adding that since then, the AfricaSan process has developed into a continental platform to generate political momentum to sanitation and hygiene. Sanitation, Hygiene and access to drinking water is a priority in all the African governments globally through the Sustainable Development Goals, but however inasmuch as they have agreed to the fact that it is a human rights  issue, they have still not been able to achieve it as many African countries are yet to provide sanitation for all their citizens. However, moving forward with the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals it is hoped that they will be able to achieve their set targets far more than they did with the Millennium Development Goals. Although it may be a complex challenge, as result of other related issues like climate change, migration to cities, but the bottom line is that they must find sustainable solutions regardless of the challenges they are experiencing. Sanitation is dignity and must be provided especially for women and girls. The African ministers Council on Water at AfricaSan4 in Dakar Senegal in 2015, held before the inception of the SDGs realized the need to develop and endorse the ten Ngor Commitments which all African governments are expected to meet in order to achieve universal access to sustainable sanitation and hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.

A member of the AMCOW Secretariat, Kitch Bawa in  presenting the outcomes of the monitoring of the Ngor Commitments on Sanitation and Hygiene which he described as the “center piece” of AfricaSan, informed the audience that the report was compiled and presented by the AfricaSan International task force, made up of key stakeholders, within the Africa Sanitation space.

The Africa-San International Task Force, he said, was restructured in 2017  to make it more effective to support sanitation across the continent and is consist of a sub-committee on monitoring, validation and reporting with a work plan that involves consultation with member states and ensure what is gathered is validated.

“We have 42 indicators in the Ngor Commitments divided into two stages and a clear-cut vision.

The first indicator – stage one, monitors the enabling environment, whilst the second indicator – stage two is different from one country to another and focuses on individual country’s set target. The vision indicator which tracks access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene and ending open defecation.

Giving a PowerPoint overview presentation of the performance on African countries through an analogy of traffic lights on the scoring of progress on the commitments, the red light showed very bad progress or no progress at all, yellow (Amber) showed some progress and green showed good progress. According to him, Africa has made very little progress from the chart as the yellow and red were visible everywhere, whilst the green was not that visible.

The result reached following the monitoring of the Ngor commitment provided the good news that the green light showed that there is very good progress that has been made on leadership and coordination which shows that increasingly across the continent more countries have identified ministries that leads Sanitation and Hygiene, and key stakeholders within the countries come together to share and learn from one another to move the sanitation sector forward.

However, the bad news is that they have done very poorly in the area of eliminating inequalities and access to sanitation services as governments are yet to look at how to provide access to sanitation services for the neglected poor, the downtrodden and people down the lowest quintile which happens to be the first commitments. He further disclosed that they have also done very badly on the issue of financing, as in 2008 when the Etiqwine Commitments were endorsed, there was a commitments made to allocate at least 0.5% to sanitation, but that up to the end of 2015 very little progress was made in that regard. This situation up to 2018 when the report was compiled has not changed as no progress has been recorded so far.

“It is even worse when it comes to the issue of safely managing sanitation and encouraging its productive re-use. It is really worse and it is for this reason we brought AfricaSan and FMS together so that by learning from each other, we can go back and see how we can encourage productive use of sanitation across the continent,”

Kitch Bawa said.

Adding, “We did very poorly in the area of creating enabling environment and therefore the country targets were not met. We expect that as we work towards improving the enabling environment we would begin to ensure that countries meet the target they set by themselves.”

The vision’ he furthered, is access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation. The situation, he said, is very poor as less than half of the people in most African countries use at least basic sanitation facilities and open defecation remains very high as more than half of the people living predominantly in rural areas in 14 countries practice open defecation. “We are even far worse in the area of addressing the issue of hygiene as we discovered that many countries do not even have data,” he disclosed, adding that only 37 countries have data on hygiene.

In conclusion, Kitch Bawa stressed on the need to work hand in gloves, share and learn from one another and strengthen the multi-stakeholders partnership in order to ensure that everyone in Africa has access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene and eliminate open defecation.

Africasan4: Ngor declaration aims to eliminate open defecation by 2030

                                                            By Babatope Babalobi

Rising from the three day 4th African Sanitation and Hygiene Conference tagged “AfricaSan4″ African leaders  have  issued the “Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene” which aims to achieve  universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation,  safe hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.

They also reaffirmed their commitment to the human right to water and sanitation for all for all Africans, and pledged to work towards progressively  eliminating inequalities that currently deny about 547m people in Africa access to safe sanitation.

Another major highlight of the declaration is a commitment by countries to fund sanitation and hygiene budget to a minimum of  0.5% of GDP by 2020.

The triennial AfricaSan organised by the African MinistersCouncil on Water  (AMCOW) aims to address Africa’s sanitation challenge including helping agencies and governments shape strategies for action at many levels.  Mainly attended  by sanitation technical experts, it provides a forum to to exchange lessons, to identify approaches and technologies that work best in their local circumstances.  This 4th AfricaSan water held in Dakar, Senegal, this week.

Text of the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene” Adopted by the African Ministers responsible for sanitation and hygiene on 27 May 2015 at AficaSan4

Preamble
We, the Ministers and Head of Delegations responsible for sanitation and hygiene in Africa, together with senior civil servants, academics, civil society, development partners and private sector at the 4th African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene (AfricaSan), convened by the Government of Senegal with support from the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) in Dakar, Senegal, May 25-27, 2015

1. Recognizing that while an estimated 133 million people living in Africa gained improved sanitation since 1990, the level of progress has not kept pace with demograpic change; many countries do not have adequate high-level leadership, financial and human resources to implement existing policies, fail to tackle equity, do not build, manage or maintain sanitation system and services, or create the large-scale hygiene behaviour change;
2. Mindful that an estimated 61% of people living in Africa do not have access to improve sanitation and that 21% still defecate in the open;
3. Noting that this lack pf access to improved sanitation together with poor hygiene practice result in a huge burden of disease and that the associated economic, human,social,health and environmental costs are a major burden on African countries;
4. Reaffirming the human right of safe drinking water and sanitation for all;
5. Welcoming the aspiration of the draft Sustainable Development Goals which include an explicit target to “By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and an end to open defecation, paying special attention to the need of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations” committing to integrating these in national policies and plans;
6. And recognizing that the time has come to incorporate the lesson from the eThekwini commitments and replace them by the “Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene”, setting out in particular clear indicator for monitoring progress;

The Vision articulated by African Ministers responsible for Sanitation and Hygiene at African 4, Dakar, Senegal, is summarized below:
Achieve universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation and hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.
Commitments
To realise this vision, our governments commit to:-

1. Focus on the poorest, most marginalized and unserved aimed at progressively eliminating inequities in access and use and implement national and local strategies with emphasis on equity and sustainability;
2. Mobilise support and resources at the highest political level for sanitation and hygiene to disproportionately prioritize sanitation and hygiene in national development plans.
3. Establish and track sanitation and hygiene budget lines that consistently increase annually to reach a minimum of 0.5%GDP by 2020;
4. Ensure strong leadership and coordination at all levels to build and sustain governance for sanitation and hygiene across sectors especially water, health, nutrition, education, gender and the environment;
5. Develop and fund strategies to bridge the sanitation and hygiene human resource capacity gap at all levels;
6. Ensure inclusive, safely-managed sanitation services and function hand-washing facilities in public institutions and spaces;
7. Progressively eliminate untreated waste, encouraging its productive use;
8. Enable and engage the private sector in developing innovative sanitation and hygiene products and services especially for the marginalized and unserved;
9. Establish government-led monitoring, reporting, evaluating, learning and review systems;
10. Enable continued active engagement with AMCOW’s AfricaSan process.

We further call on:

1. All people living in Africa, especially the youth, to utilize and maintain sanitation and hygiene services with propriety and dignity;
2. AMCOW to prioritize and facilitate adequate resourcing for sanitation and hygiene by mobilising dedicated, substantive new sources of financing;
3. AMCOW to facilitate the establishment and management of systems and processes for performance monitoring and accountability against the Ngor Declaration;
4. Training institutions in Africa to strengthen local capacity to deliver appropriate services in line with demand;
   research institutions in Africa to strengthen the evidence base and develop innovative locally appropriate solutions;
5. Civil society in Africa to forge a cohesive, coherent and transparent vision and strategy to work with all stakeholders to achieve the Ngor Declaration;
6. Traditional institutions, religious leaders and faith based organisations to strongly support equitable sanitation and hygiene activities in their communities;
7. The private sector to increase its engagement in the entire sanitation and hygiene value chain to improve innovation and efficiency;
8. Development banks, donors and partners to increase their support to government led efforts for universal access to sanitation and hygiene and to match this financial support with responsible accountable engagement.

And in recognition of this we make this declaration in Ngor, Dakar on 27th May, 2015,