Sanergy: Sustainable Sanitation
| Case Code: LDEN106 Case Length: 19 Pages Period: 2010-2015 Pub Date: 2016 Teaching Note: Available |
Price: Rs.600 Organization : Sanergy Industry: Sanitation Countries : Kenya Themes: Social Entrepreneurship |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Sanitation Crisis in Kenya
As of 2015, around 2.6 billion people across the globe lacked access to adequate sanitation and waste management services. These people relieved themselves near water bodies, the roadside, and poorly built toilets and this resulted in the spread of various diseases. Inadequate and unhygienic sanitation led to life- threatening infections like diarrhea and cholera. Moreover, improper sanitation was the second largest cause of deadly diseases in the world. In developing countries, the economic costs of poor sanitation and hygiene amounted to 2% of the total GDP. According to the World Bank’s Water Sanitation Program, 18 African countries lost around US$ 5.5 billion every year due to poor sanitation. Of this, open defecation accounted for losses of US$ 2 billion.
The condition was worse in slums which housed over 1 billion people across the globe. In underdeveloped and developing countries, there were numerous sprawling slums with worsening hygienic facilities. Lack of physical space, infrastructure, and adequate resources combined with the high density population in slums led to the sanitation crisis.
One of the nations which had a large slum population was Kenya. In 2015, the total slum population in the country was nearly 8 million. The people in slums were forced to rely on unsanitary options. About 60-80 percent of the country’s urban population lived in slums. The urban population was growing rapidly and many of the urban areas did not have proper planning. For example, in Nairobi, 60 percent of the population lived in informal areas, which, occupied only 6 percent of the total area. Almost two-thirds of the city’s 3.5 million people had their dwellings in its 200 informal settlements.
The poor condition of these slums had led to a sanitation crisis in many parts of Kenya. To use the few toilets that were available, the slum dwellers were charged a fee, which most of them could not afford. They therefore, opted to defecate in the open. A slum resident, Walter Opicha, said, "I can't use 10 Kenya shillings (US$0.12) to pay for a toilet every day when that can buy me a jerrycan of water for bathing and washing my clothes." In Kenya, people followed a practice known as 'flying toilet' – they defecated into plastic bags which they then tossed onto the streets as far away as possible from their homes. In addition, there were pit latrines which were usually just a hole in the ground; these latrines released overflowing buckets of untreated human wastes into the nearest waterways or fields, inviting further health hazards. Though these pit latrines were cleaned every few months by service employees, there was not a single toilet that hooked up to any sewage infrastructure. Between 50 and 150 people shared each pit latrine in Nairobi's slums....
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