Donors have announced $42 million in new sanitation grants that will spur innovations of the toilet around Africa.

Also sought under this fund are cutting-edge technology solutions that could turn human waste into fuel to power local communities, become fertiliser for crops, or even safe drinking water.

“What we need are new approaches, new ideas. We need to re-invent the toilet,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Programme at the 2011 AfricaSan Conference in Kigali.

The foundation is exploring new innovations and tools to address every aspect of sanitation — from the development of waterless, hygienic toilets that do not rely on sewer connections to pit emptying and waste processing and recycling.

But these must be affordable solutions that could cost no more than US5 cents per person per day and be easy to install, use, and maintain.

Lower health care costs

The World Health Organisation says improved sanitation can produce up to $9 for every $1 invested by increasing productivity, reducing health care costs, and preventing illness, disability, and early death.

Under reinventing the toilet challenge launched at the third African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene, organized by the African Ministers’ Council on Water in Kigali last week grants will be supported under different settings.

Eight universities across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America will be supported with $3 million in the challenge to reinvent the toilet as a stand-alone unit without piped-in water, a sewer connection, or outside electricity—all for less than 5 cents a day.

In another project co-funded by the German and Kenyan governments, the foundation is providing $10 million to support efforts to scale up sustainable sanitation services for up to 800,000 people and water services for up to 200,000 residents in low-income urban areas in Kenya. The foundation will also work with the US Agency for International Development on a $17 million project.

The “Wash for Life” challenge will use USAid’s Development Innovation Ventures programme to identify, test, and help scale evidence-based approaches to delivering water, sanitation, and hygiene services to the poor.

Through the African Development Bank, African Water Facility, the foundation will provide $12 million in funding for the development of sanitation pilot projects that may include faecal sludge management services in sub-Saharan Africa.

The goal is to serve up to 1.5 million urban poor who now lack access to sanitation services. Funding will also go to support work with local communities to end open defecation and increase access to affordable, long-term sanitation solutions that people would want to use.

More than a billion people around the world defecate in the open while half of all hospitalisations in the developing world are due to diseases caused by unsafe sanitation.

In Uganda households that have no toilets use “flying toilets” – polythene bags with human waste that are thrown over distances at night.
Part of the strategy of reinventing the toilet involves determining what people want and measuring what really works.

Reducing by half the number of people who don’t have access to basic sanitation is a key target of the United Nations’ 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

According to WHO, access to safe sanitation would reduce child diarrhoea by 30 per cent and significantly increases school attendance especially for girls, who often miss work or school when they are menstruating and risk sexual assault when they are forced to defecate in the open or use public restrooms.

About 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhoeal disease, which could be prevented with the introduction of proper sanitation, along with safe drinking water and improved hygiene.

“Improved sanitation is an essential human need that we must take action to address across Africa,” said Mamadou Dia, President of the African Water Association. “Efforts to focus new attention, ideas and resources on this important issue are welcome.”

The toilet was invented about 200 years ago, which triggered a sanitation revolution that saved lives to save lives but today nearly 40 per cent of the world population remains with no toilets.