Cooperating Institutes: 

UNESCO-IHE (Netherlands), Makerere University (Uganda), Kampala City Council (Uganda)

Summary:

Africa, though reported to be the least urbanized continent, is recognized as one where the rate of urbanization is highest (UNEP, 2002). The development and expansion of informal settlements in the peri-urban areas of the cities is widespread, while they harbour the majority of the urban population (60% in Kampala; WSP/NWSC, 2000). Slums are characterized by, among other things, poorly constructed houses, poor water supply and sanitary conditions, and lack or inadequate support services. Besides the spreading of diseases related to surface water (e.g. malaria), one of the main problems associated with sanitation and water in slum areas is related to the pollutant load entering and leaving the slum catchment, either as surface water or groundwater. This water is polluting drinking water, obtained from so called protected spring areas (with increased incidence of cholera and diarrhea; Howard et al., 2002, Nsubuga et al., 2003), or eutrophying surface water, due to extremely high phosphorus fluxes discharging those slum catchments (Kulabako et al., 2007a, 2007b). Therefore, the main research question of this project is: How to improve sanitation in urban slums? Three objectives have been identified in order to start answering this research question:

1: To implement low cost integrated sustainable technical sanitation solutions to provide excreta management, and grey water management to unsewered densely populated slums;

2: To analyse the impact of entire urban slum catchments of Kampala, with and without sustainable ecological sanitation, on groundwater and surface water quantities and quality, and to determine contaminant mass fluxes; and 

3: To identify financial, institutional, and sociological mechanisms or boundary conditions for successful large scale implementation of ecosan solutions in urban slums.