World Toilet Day: Africa off-track on sanitation

“At the rate Africa is going, it may only attain universal access to sanitation and hygiene 300 years from now. Meanwhile, hundreds of children under five die due to sanitation and hygiene related diseases daily; this is like losing the future today. Many more people expend valuable time and resources due to ill health, and […]

“At the rate Africa is going, it may only attain universal access to sanitation and hygiene 300 years from now. Meanwhile, hundreds of children under five die due to sanitation and hygiene related diseases daily; this is like losing the future today. Many more people expend valuable time and resources due to ill health, and other negative effects of poor sanitation,” Bai Mas Taal, Executive Secretary of AMCOW said in a statement.
He said that about 2.5 billion people across the world face indignity, inconvenience, insecurity and discomfort due to lack of access to improved sanitation. “They also have to grapple with strong health and financial implications that come with the problem. Over 600 million of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Taal said that following the adoption of the UN resolution on “Sanitation for All” at the United Nations General Assembly in July 2013, the time for Africa to rethink and intensify effort on the road maps that have been charted towards improving access to sanitation in the continent was now.
“The good news is that the recently concluded review of progress on eThekwini commitments indicates that Africa is not where we were a few years back. Significant progress has been made in the areas of policy and strategy development, and adoption of an approach for improving access to sanitation among others. However, we are far from where we should be, regarding the sanitation and hygiene MDGs targets. Common low-score denominators identified at the Central, Eastern, Southern and Western Africa sub-regional review of progress on the eThekwini commitments include financing, capacity, monitoring and evaluation, and coordination.
As we mark this year’s World Toilet Day, AMCOW wants to inspire the spirit of cooperation and communality which lives in the hearts of all Africans, to look at what we as a people can do to improve the situation.
Let us do this bearing in mind that we are fighting poverty and we are saving lives. Let the civil society, academia, the private sector and all of us, led by government, join hands to work together to save lives, restore dignity and improve livelihoods of our people,” he added.