If Africa wants to revolutionise the sanitation landscape it will have to transition its current view of sanitation as a social service towards building the sanitation industry.  

This is according to Dr Canisius Kanangire, Executive Secretary of African Ministers Conference on Water (AMCOW). Speaking at a gathering of the member states last week Kanagire said that South Africa, and Africa at large, needed technologies that use less water and that were acceptable to people, especially in rural areas.

“There is a need to appreciate the correlation between sanitation services and health, whilst recognising the potential of the sanitation industry to contribute to economic development,” he noted.

Recommendations

During the course of the meeting ministers and sector partners signed agreements and recommendations to advance the improvement of sanitation delivery on the continent.  Some of the recommendations included:

• Developing a programme aimed at promoting the use of available technologies as a pilot.
• Improving the quality of water and sanitation data, strengthening the Water and Sanitation Sector Monitoring system, establishing a knowledge management and information sharing hub at the AMCOW Secretariat, and link up with relevant water and sanitation institutions, including the Water Research Commission in South Africa.
• Mobilising resources to facilitate south-south knowledge exchanges for senior African officials and policy makers to share lessons and experiences from successful initiatives in other countries.
• Organising a Ministerial Dialogue before the end of 2019, to enable Ministers to deliberate on sanitation issues.

According to AMCOW these recommendations along with others will be implemented in line with a hope to realise the Sustainable Development Goal 6.2 and accelerate inclusive sanitation service delivery.

South African successes celebrated

The event also saw South Africa’s sanitation success take centre stage with ministers and officials congratulating the country on its achievement in the delivery of water and sanitation through the development of a National Master Plan for Sanitation, which could be shared with other African countries, and the use of new technologies in sanitation.