Scaling up Faecal Sludge Management in Kenya’s Urban Areas

Scaling up Faecal Sludge Management in Kenya’s Urban Areas

As in many countries across the developing world, in Kenya on-site sanitation systems predominate in towns. In most cases, faecal sludge from on-site systems is emptied and directly discharged into natural channels, or transported and disposed of untreated into the environment. In 2011, the Government of Kenya, through the Water Sector Trust Fund, commissioned a sanitation up-scaling concept called Up-scaling Basic Sanitation for the Urban Poor (UBSUP), which took into consideration the entire sanitation service chain. Key components of this concept include infrastructure, equipment, and services across the sanitation service chain. Implementation of the model is based on three key pillars: technology, social marketing and business and financing. These faecal sludge management (FSM) solutions are effective, practical, affordable, and do not require significant changes to the toilets which people currently use. From the start of the programme, seven decentralised treatment facilities (DTFs) with the capacity to serve 70,000 people have been constructed in seven towns in Kenya. The programme has also streamlined emptying services by integrating relevant laws into framing a concept for the emptiers. The goal of the programme is to provide a replicable urban sanitation service provision model that can be implemented nationally as a medium-term response to the FSM challenges in Kenya’s towns.