Linkages between Agriculture and Productive Sanitation: Scaling up Ecosan in Africa.

This session shared the lessons learnt from a number of encouraging initiatives and discussed with practitioners and African policy makers the opportunities and bottlenecks for scaling up productive sanitation systems where the safe use of excreta contributes to improved health and livelihood in rural and peri-urban communities. The session took place on Wednesday 20 July in Session T4 between 8:00 – 10:00. The presentaitons and agenda from this AfricaSan3 side event are all available on this page.

Presentations

Introduction to the linkages between agriculture and productive sanitation (pdf) or (ppt)
Madeleine Fogde, SEI, Sweden

Links between agriculture and productive sanitation - scaling up ecosan in Africa (pdf) or (ppt)
David Still, WRC, South Africa

Agriculture as a driver for sanitation: CREPA's experience in Burkina Faso (pdf) or (ppt)
Lucia Henry, CREPA, Burkina Faso

IFAD Technical Advisory Note - Outcomes from an R&D project on productive sanitation in Aguié, Niger (pdf) or (ppt)
Linus Dagerskog, SEI, Sweden

Experiences in ecological sanitation as a business in Malawi (pdf) or (ppt)
Kate Harawa, Water for People, Malawi

Incentives for promoting human waste reuse in Africa: What are the institutional gaps? (pdf) or (ppt)
Anselme Vodounhessi, DREA, African Union Commission

Overview of the Session

The average person in Sub-Saharan Africa excretes every year the equivalent mass of nutrients of 10 kg of chemical fertilizer which may respond to a value of 8 USD depending on local fertilizer prices (e.g. for Niger and Burkina Faso). An efficient and safe recycling of human excreta could therefore make a significant contribution to local food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially for the 500 million people (63% of total population) living in rural areas. Fertiliser prices are expected to raise further in Africa given the fact that mined phosphorus is a limited resource where reserves are being depleted fast.

Experiences from Burkina Faso and Niger indicates that when productive sanitation is seen as an important part of local nutrient management there is a potential for a fast up-scaling of sanitation via the agriculture sector accessing funding and micro credits available for food security.

Agenda of the side event