Category: Tanzania

Scaling up Shared Latrine Options: Karakata settlement, Dar-es-Salaam

By Tim Ndezi, Director Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI), Tanzania & Noah Schermbucker, SDI Secretariat 

Introduction:

Provision of sanitation services to informal settlements is a challenging task for city authorities and practioners in developing countries. In Tanzania, a situational assessment report (Part of the SHARE -Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity, project) revealed a number of factors that affect the improvement of sanitation in informal areas. These factors include lack of finance, lack of appropriate technologies and poor institutional and policy arrangements. Following data collection and assessment, precedent setting solutions are being implemented in three informal settlements in Dar-es-Salaam, namely Karakata, Keko Machungwa and Vingunguti (Located in Ilala and Temeke Municipalities). 

This short piece describes the experiences of shared latrines in KaraKata with specific emphasis on technical options, tenant–landlord relationships, community action, co-production and maintenance. It argues that shared latrines are an important solution in Dar’s informal settlements. Karakata is presented as a case study aimed at fostering deeper discussion around the issues presented.

Background:

Karakata informal settlement is located in Kipawa Ward in Ilala Municipality, Dar-es-Salaam city, Tanzania. It has a population of approximately 34,228 people of which 18,434 are Women and 15,794 are men.  It is about 11km from the city centre and close to the Dar-es-Salaam International Airport. The settlement comprises approximately 7,000 households that are occupied by both landlords and tenants. The majority of residents are tenants.

The Tanzania Federation in collaboration with the Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) started to mobilize the community in Karakata to join Federation processes in 2011. About 10 savings groups are currently established and have saved more than Tshs 20 millions (USD $ 12,500). A solid waste management program and income generating activities have been established. Like many other informal settlements Karakata lacks improved sanitation and sewerage disposal facilities leading to diseases such as cholera. Improvements of latrines have traditionally been left in the hands of individuals with little thought given to the impact of poor sanitation on the entire community. In consequence action research is now being implemented with the aim of developing and testing an approach to pro-poor city wide sanitation strategies that can be adopted and driven by federations of community organizations, and supported by public authorities and private providers. The research and subsequent precedents explore the concept of community action and co-production as essential ingredients for scaling up sanitation in informal settlements.

Federation Solid Waste collection project in Karakata

Characteristics of households in Karakata:

Private landlords own most of the land in Karakata. The plots were initially  purchased from landlords who owned huge tracts of land. Over time the buying and selling of land led to increased density in the settlement. The average household has 6 members but a maximum of 20 has been recorded. As a way to optimize income most landlords construct as many rooms for rent as possible. Renting is the most common businesses within Karakata. Most shared houses are constructed as a compound with multiple small rooms of approximately 9 square meters each under a common roof (see image below). The rooms are often constructed back to back around a central, exterior courtyard. A single room is generally occupied by one household (approximately 5 people). Hence the number of people in a compound varies from 15 to 100 depending on the number of rooms. Construction and improvement of latrines is normally the responsibility of the landlord, however most latrines at Karakata are in very poor condition. Interviews with landlords indicate that lack of finance, lack of knowledge about affordable technologies and negligence are key reasons for not improving latrines. The presence of tenants within a compound can place pressure on landlords to improve the condition of latrines within the compound. 

Construction of shared latrines in Karakata:

The construction of the shared toilets at Karakata started with the identification of 9 dedicated Federation technicians. This team consisted of 5 women and 4 men and received “peer-to-peer” training from Federation members from Dodoma and Dar-es-Salaam. Training focused on the toilet construction process. The Karakata team also continuously engaged other federation teams within Dar-es-Salaam.

Pour-flush toilets with trapezoidal blocks being used to line the substructure were the technology accepted by the Karakata community. This selection was based on the technology’s affordability to the majority of beneficiaries. During the construction phase roles and responsibilities among different actors were developed. Tenants were involved in the planning process, expressing their desires with regards to the type of latrines to be constructed. However the landlord, who is responsible for the cash and material contribution in order to reduce costs, took the final decision. In a situation of an absentee landlord, he/she could appoint a representative among the tenants to act on his behalf.  The current costs of latrines at Karakata varies according to affordability levels and ranges between USD $ 300 – 600. The operation and maintenance costs for a household latrine is about USD $ 10 – 20 per month. At the time of writing 18 latrines have been built under the SHARE project (7 in Karakata). These 18 latrines are providing services to approximately 550 – 1000 people in 3 settlements (Karakata, Keko Machungwa and Vingunguti). 

A compound in Karakata settlement 

Latrine designs 

Technical design of the pour flush toilet:

One of the key challenges in latrine improvement is the lack of affordable technologies. The majority of people who attempt to build use conventional methods that are expensive. For nearly 5 years the Federation Technical Team (FTF) has used trapezoidal blocks to line pits. The approach uses only 4 bags of cement as compared to the conventional methods which can use up to 10 bags of cement, reinforcement bars and aggregates.

Karakata community toilet construction team standing in front of a toilet serving 12 households 

The compound in which the above toilet was constructed

Community action:

The construction of shared latrines at Karakata has involved a number of actors. These include landlords, tenants, and local government leaders who play different roles in the improvement of latrines within the settlement.  Most tenants, particularly women, were available during the baseline data collection to share information that was crucial in the planning and designing of the scheme. Their inputs were important in determining the types and costs of latrines to be built. Tenants are the ones responsible for the operation and maintenance of latrines while landlords are responsible for guaranteeing the capital finance used for latrine construction. As owners of the asset, landlords take loans from the Federation urban fund and ensure repayment of the money borrowed.The Karakata Federation has ensured that local government officials are involved at all stages. These include planning, implementation, operation and maintenance and the recovery of loans.

Co-production:  

Co-production is a political strategy for the community to improve relationships with, and support from, local government. Since undertaking an enumeration and sanitation mapping exercise in Karakata settlement the community has gained considerable confidence in terms of interacting with government officials. The community has established an advocacy team of 6 federation members who have met with officials thrice to discuss areas in which the Municipality could support the Federation’s work. There is growing awareness and recognition of the federation’s sanitation work amongst municipal officials. This has resulted in municipal health officers agreeing to use the federation construction team in other settlements to train further groups in latrine construction.

Discussions indicate that in order for the Municipality to provide finance to a community sanitation project there is a need to closely involve the settlement councilor. The councilor can then carry the demands of the community to the full ward council. In addition there is a need to register the Federation groups in the Ilala municipality to allow for proper recognition by the authorities. However all these are formal procedures which require flexibility during co-production processes. While the federation appreciates the conventional arrangements for engaging the Municipality they also wish to strengthen their advocacy role through informal forums and Memorandums of Understanding (MoU’s).

Outside the federation office in Karakata

Conclusion and recommendation:

Within the context of increased urbanization and population growth the lack of conventional sanitation services in informal settlements will continue to be a critical, and expanding, challenge. Shared latrines will continue to be an important option for informal residents in Dar-es-Salaam. Key lessons that are emerging from this precedent include: The need to sharpen the relationship between landlords, tenants and local government –outlining clear roles and responsibilities & empowering community technicians with skills to support other sanitation technical challenges such as pit emptying and decentralized waste water treatment systems (DEWATS). Finally there is a need to strengthen federation advocacy teams, developing skills that will assist in engaging Municipalities and lobbying for financial and technical support. Precedents have made some progress in addressing Karakata’s sanitation demand but the establishment of a sanitation revolving fund supported by Local Government Authorities and Ward and Municipal officials would be an important step in lending financial longevity and scale to the endevour.   

Citywide Sanitation Projects in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe & Tanzania Report on Successes of First Year

*Cross-posted from SHARE Research website*

SHARE partners Shack/Slum Dwellers (SDI), together with their affiliates and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), have just published four policy briefs documenting the first year of the SHARE-funded City-Wide Sanitation Project.

The purpose of this research project is to develop inclusive, sustainable sanitation strategies. In practice this involves creating a scalable, bottom-up model for the development and realisation of pro-poor citywide sanitation, in which the residents of informal settlements engage with their local authority to identify new ways forward. The four cities where this model is being developed are Blantyre (Malawi), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Kitwe (Zambia), and Chinhoyi (Zimbabwe). 

The first year was focused on data collection, including community mapping and profiling. Here are some of the findings: 

• The study in the City of Blantyre found that 9 in 10 residents of information settlements use unimproved latrines, and that the majority of residents have experienced a collapse in these latrines during the rainy season. Most cannot afford the sanitary draining of latrines, opting instead to dig new pits every two years. 

• In the City of Dar es Salaam, the study concluded that the sewerage system only reaches 10% of the urban population, while less than 10% of public funding for sanitation is directed towards onsite sanitation services, which the majority of the population relies on.

• In the City of Kitwe, the study found that over three quarters of households in informal settlements use traditional pit latrines, due in particular to the high cost of installing sanitation facilities. 

• In the City of Chinhoyi, 70% of people in the profiled settlements rely on improvised water sources such as shallow wells and other unhygienic sources, which greatly affects their sanitation options. 82% of dwellings do not have regular rubbish collection. 

In all three cities, the vital importance of the relationship between tenants and landlords was highlighted. Tenants make up the majority of households in informal settlements, and are therefore unlikely to invest in improved water and sanitation facilities. On the other hand, the incentives for landlords to make this important investment are not always eviden

The community-led approach to understanding the water and sanitation situation in these four cities has not only made residents and Federation leaders better informed, but it has also already greatly improved the relationship of these residents and Federation leaders with the City Councils. In Blantyre, for example, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the City Council, SDI partner CCODE and the Federation committing them to work together in the housing, water and sanitation sectors. The council has also set up the Informal Settlement Unit to work directly with the informal settlements in the city, demonstrating its commitment to scaling up action to address needs in these areas. In Kitwe, the City Council has agreed to establish a multi-stakeholder sub-committee on the upgrading on informal settlements, which will include SDI affiliate members along councillors and utility providers. In Chinhoyi, following an MoU in 2012, the communities of two of the profiled informal settlements – Mupata and Shackleton – have now begun to explore strategies for moving forward on the issues of sanitation in collaboration with the city authorities. 

The project is now in its second year, where, building on firm knowledge of the situation in each locality and the stronger collaboration that the first year has enabled, precedents will be developed to exemplify new and effective sanitation solutions. The third and final year will be dedicated to planning to expand provision to those in the city without adequate sanitation. It is anticipated that this final year will develop a city-wide strategy for inclusive sanitation and include agreements with local government that can help provide the foundations for such a strategy.

Read the full Policy Briefing for Blantyre, Malawi

Read the full Policy Briefing for Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Read the full Policy Briefing for Kitwe, Zambia

Read the full Policy Briefing for Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe

Landlords & Tenants Relationship in Improving Sanitation in Dar es Salaam

By Ariana K. MacPherson, SDI Secretariat & Stella Steven, CCI Tanzania

One of the key challenges for improving sanitation in slums is the issue of land, and structure, ownership. During a study conducted by Tanzania Urban Poor Federation and Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) in 2012, community members from Keko Machungwa settlement in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania highlighted the relationship between tenants and landlords as paramount to the success of efforts to improve sanitation in their settlement. 

Most houses in informal settlements in Tanzania are owned by individual landlords and rented to people within the settlements. The landlord and tenants’ relationship is critical in addressing sanitation in urban informal settlements because decision making regarding latrine choice and improvement is made by landlords who are also responsible for investment costs. Despite these responsibilities most landlords have not paid much attention to the improvement and construction of good toilets within their houses.

This report, prepared by the Centre for Community Initatives in Dar es Salaam, looks at the case of Zaituini Mohamed, a tenant, and Secilia Selamani Mbwana, a landlord, to explore the different roles and responsibilities of each party in improving sanitiaton in the settlement. Tenants can provide information regarding available loans and finance for improving sanitation within their respective households, while landlords can ensure that toilets are maintained and that rents do not increase once these facilities are improved. 

For more information on the Tanzania SDI Alliance’s efforts to build relationships between tenants and landlords to improve sanitation at scale, read the full report here. 

Report from the 9th East African Hub Meeting

The 9th East African Hub Meeting was held from 24th-28th June 2013 in Jinja, Uganda. Approximately seventy-eight people from Kenya, Tanzania, and the host country, Uganda, participated in the conference. Mr. Hassan Kiberu, National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda (NSDFU) Chairman, opened the conference, and, along with a few supporters, remained Master of Ceremony for the duration of the meeting. The purpose of the quarterly Hub meetings are to bring the three countries in the East African community together to learn from and reflect on one another’s experiences and challenges, as well as to improve and grow the federation in a sustainable way throughout the region. The key issues discussed included the importance of partnerships symbolized by the conference’s theme: “Enhancing Partnerships for Effective Governance and Improved Service Delivery.” Partnerships came up frequently and often passionately as a topic of discussion, underscoring their necessity in the work of conference attendees. It was noted that this was the first Hub to integrate all development process stakeholders. This could be observed directly through a Municipal Development Forum (MDF) meeting held during the conference, in which ministry officials, town clerks, MDF members and slum dwellers all participated. This was a good learning opportunity for all countries to see how “bringing all the stakeholders into one room” can affect the development process. Other key issues included discussions of the federation’s growth and projects in the different countries and how to learn from their process and results, and continued urbanization throughout the region and its implications for development and the urban poor.

Click here to see the full report on Hub Meeting activities and action points. 

Strengthening Partnerships: Lessons from the 9th East Africa Hub Meeting

Rippon sanitation unit. 

**Cross-posted from the Muungano Support Trust Blog** 

By Shadrack Mbaka, Muungano Support Trust, Kenya 

Just as the word “Hub” denotes, it’s a center of activity or interest; a focal point of deliberating on common regional interests. It is for this fundamental reason that the 9^th SDI East African Hub meeting hosted by the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda (NSDFU), brought together participants representing the East African countries under Slum Dwellers Federation namely; Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The hub meeting is held quarterly and rotated between member countries. This quarter the meeting was held in Uganda and hosted by the Ugandan SDI Alliance. The meeting’s theme, “STRENGTHENING PARTNERSHIP” brought in representatives from the countries’ support NGOs, Town Clerks and Officials from various Ugandan Municipal Councils.

Introduction

Ms. Sarah Nandudu, the Vice Chairperson of the National Slum Dwellers of Uganda welcomed the participants and introduced them to the program for the next three days.

Mr. Hassan Kiberu the Uganda Federation National chairman kicked off the meeting with a keynote speech expressing his joy to host the meeting and urge the participants to make the good use of this forum in addressing the needs of the majority federation members whom which we represent.

In his speech to KUT members, Hassan reiterated that the SDI East African family as slum dwellers; We are the People! We are the Problems! and We are the Solutions!

These solutions cannot be met without integration and embracement of partnership with all stakeholders and actors in a bottom up driven change process. Hassan wound up his speech by calling a one minute silence in remembrance of fallen leaders who have passed on. The one minute silence was mounted in honor of the late Muungano Wa Wanavijiji Chairman Benson Erick Osumba, Tanzania Councilor who has been a friend of the federation and many other federation members who have lived their lives in a quest of making slums inclusive in the settlement developmental agenda. He urged the meeting to remember in prayers Catherine and Uganda Driver Mr. David, Sky Dobson who were involved in a fatal accident and are recovering.

Site Visits

The participants were grouped into three groups for site visits as follows:

Group One:    Rippon, RIMAS saving groups and Danida Savings groups

Group Two:   Masese Sanitation Unit, Street Lighting & Walukuba Learning Centre

Group Three: Rubanga Sanitation & Drainage System & Bugembe Water Project

Official Opening

The three-day forum was officially opened by His Worship the Mayor of Jinja Municipal Council alongside with His Town Clerk, Presidents of the Municipal Development Forums and Town clerks from various Municipalities.

The Jinja Mayor, Muhammad Baswari Kezaala (pictured above) invited the participants attending the 9^th East African Hub and welcomed them to Jinja. He acknowledged that the poor have a right to the city, and therefore the need to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. This partnership is as a result of a leadership that appreciates the course of the poor. We shall continue to partner with the NSDFU and will continue to do what is asked of the Council,” said Mayor Muhammad.

He appreciated donors for the funding and giving them a free hand to design and tailor projects that suits Jinja. The involvement of the poor in development projects is important in long-term sustainability of community participatory projects.

The East African Hub has demonstrated regional integration of three East African Countries unlike the level observed by the heads of states. The programmes under the flagship of AcTogether have planted the seeds of real programmes and projects to empower the poor.

The 9th East African Hub Meeting was also graced by the Lands, Housing and Urban Development Hon. Daudi Migereko. Initially the government faced numerous challenges involving slum upgrading in respective Municipalities; this has seen the development of the National Slum Upgrading strategy. This gave an opportunity for the federation to lay down priorities of upgrading. Communities through community led enumerations have established key infrastructural upgrading scenarios.

In her speech, Sarah Nandadu noted that this partnership has created unique kind of partnerships with settlements in different cities with their governments. This has been witnessed in the provision of technical support to the urban poor for free, giving them an opportunity to be part of sustainable development initiatives.

Minister Migereko pledged his support for the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda and invited KUT to Uganda. He thanked the efforts made by the Federation and Actogether in the job they are doing for its inline with straight forward thinking that ought to be reflected in our national leadership. Slum dwellers of Uganda should make a breakthrough in transforming themselves; this can happen only by transforming our cultures.

Slum dwelling should only be transitory and not a way of life for the poor. The outcomes of such forums should be shared with Government, and make proposals on issues that would enable us transform lives by addressing issues of slums.

Planning and urban development ought to be taken seriously and implemented. Planning in Uganda is a participatory process for all and my government is willing to work with slum dwellers, for in this modern day slum dwellers need not to live in such a poorly planned environment, we are engaging all stakeholders, said Minister Migereko.

He also cited the Indian federation; where women have taken it upon themselves to effect slum upgrading. Women are doing savings, participating in conceptualizing community project scope and implementing the project and at the end of it all transformative settlements spring up from the foundations. Let women take the initiatives of abandoning negative cultures and be relevant with the current times.

He also asked development partners to capacitate communities to take part in the development projects; this enables an enabling environment for transformation for communities to work towards improving their lives. The government of Uganda is coming up with a training policy to enable communities gain knowledge and skills in aiding self reliance and job creation for the youth, to produce quality work in the settlements.

He also noted that; he had seen many projects scrambled, because they are not implemented in a consultative way while the federations with their little resources have achieved a lot. His worship the mayor expressed his confidence that the Rio de Jaineiro declaration during the 5^th World Urban Forum has been successfully planted in Jinja and he is ready to support it. 

Building Bridges, Rather than Burning them Up

The underlying lessons of the 9^th KUT meeting revolved around upgrading informal settlements, not only from a communal perspective but also the creation of a linkage that can mobilize technical and financial exercise presented by the formal stakeholders such as governments, Multispectral  organisations, professionals, and academics. Upgrading settlements requires the inclusion of whole affected communities in the processes that go into such improvements. Whether we refer to the political, financial or planning aspects of upgrading, it is the initiative and leadership of organized communities that is the essential ingredient in making any objective project successful.

The National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda has enabled communities to build bridges with municipal councils and their respective senior officials. This has resulted in the provision of new sanitation blocks as part of a spatial layout plan developed by the community. Through enumerations and mapping, communities have been able to write proposals identifying the needs of a settlement. For example, Rippon Settlement in Jinja Municipality was able to lobby the Ministry to allocate them land to put up a sanitation block. The issue of sanitation was indeed prioritized as a by-product of enumerations.

Through the relationship that the federation has with the Ministry of Lands, land was allocated and, by virtue of writing a proposal to the Jinja Municipal Council Development Forum and project viability assessed and securing funding from the Transforming Settlements of the Urban Poor in Uganda (TSUPU programme) to implement the project.

Like any other urban centre in East Africa, Uganda’s urban centres are composed of migrants from different parts of the world for the purpose of economic gains. The central concentration of resources has led to huge influx of people which these urban centres cannot accommodate in terms of housing and basic services, leading to the growth of slums. The Uganda Federation was established and exists to engage with the urban community in identifying sustainable solutions to these problems. The federation works through an array of programmes that are community led in bringing together these communities and engaging each other into various action areas.

The federation has so far used its powerful tool of mobilization through daily savings and enumeration, aimed at collecting information that can be used in informing the government and stakeholders in their development quests. Through these the federation has been recognized as an model people’s organization with grassroot ties to development processes. So far the federation is a key player in the TSUPU Programmes implementation among with other projects. The federation so far has established sustainable partnership with various municipalities in Uganda and combined ties with other slum dwellers in Kenya and Tanzania. However the federation still faces challenges ranging from Rapid inflation, Political interferences and regular transfer of officers from their work stations.

So often in the operalisation of community led federated urban poor movements, leadership structures have been challenged throughout community projects and processes. However, in pursuant of the success of any community agenda, there needs to be the existence of strong leaders who have the ability and mandate of their movements to mobilize residents through planned processes, has had powerful outcomes for the success of any community project.

Participants noted an apparent dependency on technical support from the NGO, insufficient contributions from savings, difficulties with uninterested or unaccountable leadership structures, and a general lack of “sensitization” of the community. It was emphasized that community mobilization is the key to the sustainability and partnerships formulated of any upgrading project. As long as the NGO drives the process, the project fosters a growing sense of entitlement in the community and prevents residents from taking ownership.

Reactions to the Mayor’s Speech & Reports from Site Visits

The President of the Moroto Municipality Development Forum applauded the mayor’s speech and envied the residents of Jinja for being lucky by having committed leaders from the municipality. He promised to mobilize his other colleagues to work with the federation and communities in his municipalities.

The representative of the president of MDF Entebbe expressed her excitement on the meeting and promised to entrench community procurement in their project circles in her municipality. Her promise was based on her experience from the site visit on two projects one funded and implemented by the Municipality which has stalled and the one implemented by the federation which is functioning however how simple it is. She promised to mobilize and advice her seniors to one conduct and exchange program between Jinja and Entebbe and Two to redesign their SUP implementation circle.

The MDF President, Masaka Municipality appreciated how the federation is undertaking its activities and projects in such a consultative way. He appreciated how the residents of Jinja are managing public land. He added that in his town most of the lands for developments have been grabbed and that has paralyzed the development of my municipality and many others that haven’t spoken. He promised to continue working with the federation in organizing the communities within Masaka Municipality to join into the big voice of slum dwellers.

The secretary of the Gulu Municipal Development Forum shared about the problems affecting the Gulu people especially the high number of Internally Displaced Persons due to ever ending wars in Northern Uganda.  IDP’s have turned their camps into slums without services. He requested for support from SDI and other partners in alleviating the plights of the Gulu people. He also reiterated that partnership is the only way out to sustainable development.

Richard, from Tanzania Federation expressed his joy on how the Ugandan federation is working with the community and the partnership with the Jinja Municipality and the Government. He however urged the Uganda federation to assist in the replication of the same to other countries within the East African Hub. He noted that the Uganda government is committed to support the federation and request if the Uganda government can assist Kenya and Tanzania federation in mobilizing their government to support the two federations in their respective countries.

A representative of Gulu Municipal Council raised some key issues by sharing the outcome of his research on “At what extent can slums generate income to improve the well being of the urban poor”. He noted that whenever you begin improving the welfare of a certain community alone then you are attracting influx to that area. These issues takes us to the point of sustainability of these improvements, which must be integrated with employment, but the questions is that what do you do with the un-employed (those without skills that can attract employment)?

Stella Stephens from Tanzania CCI urged for the focus on proper book keeping since lack of these records do plunder groups and organization to fallout

Municipal Development Forums

The Jinja Municipal-Wide Development Forum is a multispectral forum that promotes sustainable urban development in Jinja, where the community plans its projects side by side with their respective with their Municipal Councils.

MDF has an executive Committee elected by the Communities from the community, Private, Public and media sectors. The Committee is chaired by an elected president. The Committee currently works on a voluntary basis, for it’s a partime assignment. Members sitting at the Jinja Municipal Forum come from various savings groups in Jinja, technical teams of the Council, government officials and the private sector.

The Municipal Development Forums, particularly in Jinja was widely lobbied by the National Slum Dwellers federation of Uganda.

The forum is a platform to share development ideas and strategies of making Jinja a better Municipality. This would include policy issues, infrastructure development and creation of linkages.

Financial allocations are allocated to development projects based on communal priorities, whose proposals and work plans are filed with the MDF for scrutiny, and upon verification and approval of the proposals funds are allocated to the project through the TSUPU (Transforming Settlements of the Urban poor in Uganda) programme. The National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda has widely up scaled their sanitation projects through the   TSUPU programme and allocation of land from the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.

The TSUPU programme is a partnership initiative undertaken by the Government of Uganda and its support partners to align urban development efforts at the national government, local government, and community level. It aims to:

a) Develop a national urban policy that will guide sustainable urban development in Uganda, ensure the empowerment of local governments, and reinforce the importance of active community participation.

b) Build the capacity of local governments to strategically manage urbanization.

c) Empower organizations of the urban poor to actively engage in local development.

d) Focus on secondary cities (Arua, Jinja, Kabale, Mbale, and Mbarara)

Conclusion

As the curtains to the 9^th East African hub meeting were drawn down, it was indeed evident from the various country reports, challenges and Points of actions that KUT (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) will support one another in the establishment of best practices through the establishment and strengthening of partnerships for the better of communities represented at the regional, continental and global networks.

Activating Social & Political Change through Community-Driven Slum Profiling

By Walter Fieuw, CORC, South Africa (on behalf of SDI Secretariat)

Community-driven settlement profiling, enumerations, and spatial mapping are practices that federations associated with SDI have developed over two decades. These become valuable tools in negotiating more equitable resource flows from the public and private sector to urban poor communities. Profiling is a “top-level scan” of the most important features of the settlement, an estimation of the number of shacks, socio-economic and demographic information and access to services. It is also often times the first point of contact of the federation to a non-affiliated settlement/slum and opens a dialogue on the networking of community structures at the city level to influence city governments. Over the past two decades federations have used this tool to categorise and map out slums in cities. Countries use different questionnaires, data capturing systems, and mapping tools to reach this goal. In order to upscale this data to give a global narration based on credible and community-driven quantitative data, SDI has engaged the Santa Fe Institute, who are supporting a process of standardisation. The goal of this process is apparent upfront: To enhance the federations’ ability to generate settlement information in a standardised format for city, regional, national and global analysis, while maintaining all the social mobilisation characteristics that have made profiling a powerful tool in the first place. 

In a two-day workshop between 13 – 14 April 2013 held in Nairobi, federations from Africa and Asia came together to discuss the purposes, community structures and impact of profiling, and to chart the way forward. Jockin Arputham, president of SDI and coordinator of the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India, opened the workshop by reflecting on the progress to date:

This meeting has been called to alert and request everybody to create an action programme for the profile. We all have different questionnaires, although we say we are one family. Settlement profiles need to be captured, and we need to stay consistent in the questions we require. If the country needs more information, you need to add another page. We need one SDI questionnaire, so we can use the information globally. We want to understand what the magnitude of our power is. We want to make different cases to different audiences. We want to collaborate with all the actors speaking about land, housing, infrastructure; all the people speaking about the urban.

This practice first started in India where slum dwellers were exposed to slum eradication in the 1960s and ’70s. Shekar Mulyan recalled the experiences at a young age.

I was born in a Bombay slum, and composition of the settlement was that of migrant workers. My father and Jockin were the first generation leaders. I was six years old when an eviction started that changed the way we would think about organised communities.

Baba Atomic Centre owned the land where we lived. The government recognised the strategic importance of the land, and started planning a large resettlement/eviction process. Jockin was organising protests, but we were failing on all fronts. We did not have any information about of settlement, even though were engaging trade unions, government agencies, and so on. We lost the court case, and the government commanded us to move once again. 

We realised that no other community had to go through what we went through. We started thinking about ways to assist communities in similar situations, and how we can best support them. We started counting all the slums in Bombay. This happened over weekends, and there were no resources to support the process. When we compared the numbers the state put forward, and that what we collected, we saw a large discrepancy: the state was always undercounting and minimising the urban crisis.

By creating a “slum dweller perspective” on city planning processes through the practice of profiling informal settlements, groups networking at the city level have better information on their position in the city. City governments often view informal settlements as being “black holes” of demands on state resources; that poor people don’t contribute to the resource base and demand more services and social allowances and grants. This false belief often diverges development capital from poor neighbourhoods towards middle and upper classes, believing that the cost of such infrastructure investments will be recovered through a larger tax base. In this way, cities become more divided, more unequal and the chance of poverty alleviation is seen as a trickle down effect from the market, which has been proven to be untrue.

Alternative views on the organisation and vibrancy challenge these (neoliberal) assumptions of city building. Poor people operate in an economic and social structure that is beyond the control of the state. Here jobs are created, livelihood networks are established, crisis committees respond to disasters, and people build cities from the bottom up. Federations associated to SDI are generating critical information that builds these counter-hegemonic views of the urban poor, rendering a rich and diverse picture of the productive life of slums and slum dweller communities.

Enkanini, Stellenbosch, South Africa Settlement Profile based on Enumeration Map

The experience of the Homeless People’s Federation of Malawi speaks directly to these points as Mphatso Njunga, a federation leader, reflected at the workshop:

We are also using our profiling process to understand the budgeting processes in cities, and we are pushing the government to open up participatory spaces to influence the allocation of budgets. In Blantyre, we were never aware of special budgets to development infrastructure in informal settlements, and now we are more involved. We are also working with universities around planning for upgrading. The profiling helps us to categorise the most pressing needs, and create an action plan.

Moving beyond the influence on state resources towards building critical mass of community capacity and social capital, the experience of the Homeless People’s Federation of Tanzania inspired a lot of discussion between the federations.

I am from a slum in Dar es Salaam and I have been involved in enumerations since the federations started. We started in 2005, which focused on mobilising savings schemes. The SDI team assisted us to build the template questionnaire, and they mobilised two groups. In 2006, we did another enumeration, which was spurred by eviction threats. The government played up the tenants and the occupants against one another, and wanted to evict last mentioned group. The Kenyan team helped us with numbering, measuring plots, and capturing data. (Husua, federation coordinator)

Once communities have generated sufficient “critical mass” and information about slums, alternative democratic spaces can emerge in which the federation has an influence on the flow of resource which determines whether cities become more pro-poor. Brenda from the Zambian federation recalled their working partnerships with government’s structure.

We network with the government’s ward development committee (WDC) and get introduced to the community. The WDC plays an important role in making bridges between the formal and the informal.

We have collected 139 settlement profiles on the total number of 255 slums. This spreads over three cities. Working with the NGO we collect and analyse the data, clean it and process it, and then share it from the bottom up: the community, WDC, city and national minister.

The federations closed the two day meeting on reflecting on the way going forward. Countries agree to a 2 month and 6 months action plan to prioritise profiling in cities. SDI will continue to track the progress and application of this new and emerging system for collecting slum profiles.

In Tanzania, Scaling Up Sanitation for the Urban Poor

By Noah Schermbrucker, SDI Secretariat

The improvement of sanitation in urban informal settlements in Africa is one of the key upgrading strategies that can make a tangible difference in poor communities. Through a joint action research project titled SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity) communities in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia are using the SDI rituals of community-driven enumerations, profiling and mapping to outline the obstacles to achieving pro-poor citywide sanitation. The next phase of the project calls on the countries to build precedent setting pilot projects based on the information collected.

At a recent meeting in Tanzania each country reflected on progress made and the way forward. Discussions and presentations focused on how to use the information gathered (situational analysis) to generate political momentum, leverage resources, forge partnerships, create awareness and go to scale. Discussions were complemented by a visit to Keko Machungwa informal settlement to see latrines built by the Tanzanian federation and to Chamasi housing project where the group saw a constructed wetland, built to treat wastewater. A team from Uganda with experience in building and managing communal toilet facilities was also present throughout the 3-day meeting and significantly added to the discussions.

As the precedent setting phase of the project starts in earnest, federation members also discussed the key challenges as outlined by the situational analyses. This blog focuses on extracts from two presentations given by the Tanzanian federation – one about the research conducted and the second about likely precedents to address the challenges identified in the research phase. It is hoped that these details will give the reader a flavor of the challenges federations face in providing pro-poor sanitation at scale and the incremental steps employed to tackle these complexities.

Dar-es-Salaam: Sanitation Situational Analysis

Background:

Dar-es-Salaam has a current approximate population of 4 million which is growing by 8% P.A.

• 70%-80% live in informal settlements and the city is split into 3 municipalities.
• The sewerage network covers only 10% of the city while the coverage of pit latrines is 98%.
• The absence of a sanitation policy has led to the lack of guidance to role-players in the sector. A draft policy is currently being developed.
• Little emphasis on sanitation & hygiene at the local level. 

Research and Findings: 

The Tanzanian federation undertook a surveying and mapping exercise of sanitation conditions in existing settlements. While pit latrine coverage was high, the conditions of many toilets was extremely poor. Some key findings included:

• The main type of toilet used is the traditional pit latrine, which are normally poorly constructed, have poor super structure and cracking walls that affect stability. Four cases were noted during the study where people drowned in the latrines’ pits.
• Lack of finances to improve the latrines also emerged as a key issue. This is compounded when negotiating the delicate relationship between landlords and tenants.
• Pit emptying also emerged as a major challenge. Access to latrines is difficult because of the layout of informal settlements. Costs are also significant and existing practices have associated health and environmental impacts. 

Pit emptying can be dangerous and unhygienic. 

GIS was used to map the toilet type and location within informal settlements such as Keko Machungwa. The mapping process was done with the assistance of the community and local officials. 

Toilets presented in the map:

• Eco-San:  2
• Pour Flush: 336
• Septic Tank: 37
• Traditional pit Latrines: 496
• Tire pit latrines: 5
• Piped to stream: 3
• No toilet: 23

Dissemination and outputs for the Tanzanian federation:

• The Federation has been able to understand the latrine situation in selected informal settlements in Dar es Salaam city.
• Skills acquisition to federation members with regards to data collection skills, numbering, use of computer and cameras and GPS devices.
• Relationships developed with communities and government officials at the street, ward and municipal level.
• Implement alternative methods of pit emptying (gulper).

From the above extracts the reader should have a sense of some of the challenges that the Tanzanian federation faces. Even though there is a relatively high coverage of latrines, they are in a very poor condition and emptying them is costly and difficult.

The second presentation given by the Tanzanian team outlines some of the precedents they will use to address the above challenges.

Precedent Identification Process: 

Discussion was done with federation members and they identified precedents based on situational analysis results:

• Establishment of Sanitation Centers as a means for sanitation improvement and going to scale.
• Introduce viable pit emptying mechanisms such as the “Gulper”
• Train latrine construction technicians
• Construction of shared latrines and promotion of accepted technologies
• Construction of shared septic tanks

Discussion Meeting with Local Government Authority:

Meetings took place between local government authorities and the federation members in order to discuss the results and identify the precedents:

• Establishing sanitation centers
• Construction of shared septic tanks and DEWATS (Decentralized Waste Treatment Systems) 
• Law enforcement for negligent landlords

Sanitation Centers:

• Management of the sanitation center will be by the community including the Federation, Community Health Committees and other key actors. 
• Actors involved in the management would consider the interests of various groups including tenants and owners (negotiating this relationship)
• Interventions should aim to meet needs of different people.

How precedents will facilitate scaling up:

• Sanitation centers will be a focal point for community action and organization 
• The center will provide co-production opportunities by linking federation initiatives with other stakeholders
• Strengthen community and government relations by linking with ward level government in a manner that will provide an opportunity for local government to participate.
• Different models of payment for services like installment payment and co-payment between structure owners and tenants
• Sanitation mapping to understand land ownership arrangements and how it affects sanitation improvement
• Explore land availability for communal septic tanks, DEWATS and wetland systems, systems which would accommodate many people within settlements
• Link with other departments and institutions for expertise and resource mobilization (water utility, drilling department & academic institutions)

Taking Academia to the Slums: AAPS Attends the 5 Cities Seminar

Langrug informal settlement hosted an SDI-AAPS studio this past year.

By Noah Schermbrucker, SDI Secretariat

Last week’s 5 Cities Seminar focused on building relationships; relationships between urban poor communities and government, between federations of the urban poor in different cities who face similar, yet unique, challenges and between the formal and informal worlds that shape rapidly urbanizing cities.  Throughout the conference, urban planners from the African Association of Planning Schools (AAPS) have joined communities and officials to learn about incremental informal settlement upgrading.

Partnerships with university planning schools can produce tangible results and leverage resources for urban poor communities. Over the past year, AAPS and SDI have facilitated a number of planning studios (In Uganda, Cape Town and Malawi) with various outputs (e.g. settlement-wide upgrading strategies, circulation and infrastructure designs, and detailed maps of previously undocumented settlements). The studios have started to remove planners from the comfort of their offices and challenged antiquated norms and standards, ensuring a serious engagement with urban poor communities. These engagements need to be sustained and not once off interventions so that their value is not significantly diminished.

On the third day of the 5 Cities conference, planners from across Africa held a separate reflection session where they received a detailed brief on the Cape Town planning studio which took place in the beginning of 2012 and discussed the other studios that had taken place in Kampala and Malawi.  The Cape Town studio, a partnership between the South African SDI Alliance and The University of Cape Town has taken place for the last two years. The 2012 studio was a 6-month engagement with Langrug, the informal settlement that the 5 Cities delegates visited on day 1 of the conference.

Students with backgrounds in urban planning and architecture worked with the community to produce upgrading plans for the settlement to be used by the local municipality with whom the community already has an MoU. A significant challenge is what actual impacts such long terms plans have, and if more immediate short or medium term plans would have led to more immediate results for the community, rather than grand scale long term visions.

Further discussions ranged across a number of studio related topics, including what type and level of students have worked on the studios, how studios should become sustainable permanent fixtures in the curriculum, the importance of drawing in government officials to maximize political capital and momentum and how the studio, in a dialogic engagement between community leaders and students, should set community priorities and have tangible outputs.  

An important point raised by Professor Mtafu Muanda from Malawi was about working in communities that do not have a large SDI presence. He related how the planning studio in Salisbury Lines, Mzuzu had worked with a much larger community and there was a relatively insignificant SDI federation. He explained that for a studio to be effective it had to draw in the whole community and not just a select group of federation members as this fragments the community and might undermine traditional leadership structures. In the case of the Blantyre studio, the Federation used the studio to mobilize the larger community and make them aware of their activities. The traditional leadership structure, and their buy-in into the studio, also assisted greatly with making the studio a community wide process.

Images from the SDI-AAPS Studio at Salisbury Lines settlement in Mzuzu. 

In addition, new studios were mooted, especially outside of South Africa, for the upcoming year. In Tanzania preparations are already underway for a collaborative studio between the SDI affiliate (CCI – Center for Community Initiatives) and Ardhi University; a Namibian studio will take place later in the year and the possibility of a studio in Zimbabwe was raised. The point was stressed that such studios need to become a part of the curriculum and not singular events.

Just as planning does not occur in a silo, separated form local contexts of informality, neither does the shaping of a city. The links between legislators, planners, implementers and communities are evident, although all too often not given enough consideration.  Because of these links, it makes sense that AAPS planners form part of the 5 Cities programme and learn about informal settlement planning and upgrading, themes that are relevant to experiences and conditions of informality in South Africa and across the African continent.

Building relationships between planners and urban poor communities is an important part of SDI’s ongoing efforts to link the formal with the informal. There is certainly a space for planners within such partnerships, as long as they are positioned not as “top down” professionals but as co-learners who work with the community to produce tangible results based on community priorities and grounded reality.

Announcing the SDI 2011/12 Annual Report

SDI is happy to annouce our 2011/12 Annual Report, a reflection of where SDI has grown to over the past 25 years. This includes a discussion of SDI’s practices for change, a report on the SDI Secretariat, the building of internal reporting and documentation systems, and SDI’s international advocacy and increasing presence on the global stage. The report concludes with a discussion of SDI’s approach to key urban issues affecting the lives of the urban poor across the developing south, including water and sanitation, climate change, natural disasters, incremental habitat, enumerations and mapping of slum settlements, and financing slum upgrading.  

For the complete document, click here.

In Tanzania, Reaching the Wider Community Through Improved Sanitation

By the Tanzanian Urban Poor Federation with the support of the Center for Community Initiatives (CCI)

Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania with an estimated population of 4 million people. 80% of its population is estimated to be living in informal settlements where people are living with inadequate access to services such as water, sanitation and poor housing. Due to extensive use of pit latrines associated with inadequate supply of clean and safe water and unhygienic pit emptying practices, informal settlements dwellers largely live in high risk of contracting diseases including cholera and diarrhea.

In their efforts to improve sanitation in Tanzania, particularly in Dar es Salaam city, the Tanzanian Urban Poor Federation initiated sanitation projects by providing micro loans for latrine improvement to its members. In 2011, federation members from Dar- es-Salaam organized an exchange visit to Malawi aimed at acquiring the knowledge from fellow federations on how they are managing loans. While in Malawi federation members learned that the Malawi federation is giving loans to both federation and non-federation members with the aim of making intervention at a wider scale to enable poor communities to improve their sanitation situation. In July 2011 initial loans were given to 10 non-federation members. It was based on an understanding that the majority of federation members are tenants who are not able to apply for toilet loans due to their land tenure status and furthermore sanitation problems affect entire communities regardless of their land tenure status and whether they are federation members or not.

Before issuing the loans to the initial 10 borrowers the process of loan provision started with the training of twelve technicians of whom two were men and ten women and strengthening the relationship with the local administration at Mtaa (settlement) level. The loans given to non-federation members are managed at two levels; the saving scheme (which identified the borrowers) and Mtaa leaders. These two parties are working in collaboration. The Mtaa leaders are the guarantors of loans and make follow-ups with non-federation members while the saving scheme, based at the same locality, ensures that the loan follow-ups are made and the repayment is done according to schedule.

The loan provision to non-federation members started as a pilot project and so far it has been very successful, as all the initial ten borrowers have finished repaying their loans before the agreed time. This success has led to the implementation of a second phase where another loan has been extended to 10 people in August 2012. In total 20 toilets have been constructed which serve 120 households and 250 people respectively.

Amongst the second phase of beneficiaries of the loans was Mr. Khatib Athuman, 60 years old who did not manage to hide his deep appreciation for accessing the loan for improving his toilet. Since 1996 Mr. Khatib who has a family of 7 people has been using a simple pit latrine constructed with lined old car tires and dilapidated iron sheets which did not offer privacy, had bad smell and the pit was overflowing. This exposed him and other family members to high health risks and embarrassment due to poor means of emptying which was done using tins by Mr. Khatib’s son. Because of limited space it was very hard for Mr. Khatib to access a place for digging a big pit for diverting the waste, as an alternative he was digging a small pit for emptying little waste just to make the room available for toilets use for another three to four days. During the rainy season the situation becomes worse and emptying occured more than three times per week. Mr. Khatib’s wife added that the situation of their toilet was very bad to the extent that it has affected the relationship with her grandchildren as they usually wish to come and spend days with them but because of the lack of a proper toilet they could not allow them to come with the fear of risking their health.

“My grand children could not visit us because of a bad latrine, even this coming Eid holiday they asked if they could come but we did not agree with them because of the latrine” -Asha, Mr. Khatib’s wife

Speaking during the handing over of toilet construction materials to 10 non-federation members at Keko Machungwa settlement, the representative of Temeke Municipal Health Officer Mrs. Rehema Sadick said, “lack of adequate sanitation has been one of the major challenge contributing to eruption of diseases such as cholera and diarrhea which leads to a loss of lives as well as income.” She insisted that the community should use this opportunity by accessing loans for improving their toilets and although the Municipal Council has limited financial resources they are ready to work with the federation through provision of technical support and mobilizing communities.

In total the amount of loans given to non-federation members is TZS 8,780,000 Tshs (USD$ 5487.5) in Dar es Salaam. More community members are expected to be reached with the federation through this initiative not only in Dar es Salaam but as well as in other regions where they have already started implementing sanitation initiatives.

The Keko Machungwa settlement has set a good example of community led initiatives in improving water and sanitation services by constructing 1 public toilet at the market, constructing 30 households toilet and drilling one borehole connected to three water points. The federation has also initiated toilet-emptying programmes using Gulper technology and the training of Hygiene promotion teams (PHAST teams) for community mobilization on improving hygiene practices.

The federation has also managed to convince some land lords to adopt eco-san technology in order to get rid of the challenges involved in emptying pit latrines including the issue of space for digging another pit as well as unhealthy manual emptying practices and the lack of road access.

These initiatives focus to bring the government down to the settlement level to provide resources and work with communities to scale up sanitation improvements in informal settlements and improving living conditions in general.