African Water Facility Promotes Safe Sanitation, Hygiene Education for Urban Poor in Liberia

This will be the first initiative by the Government to provide fecal sludge management services to unsewered poor areas of Liberia since the end of the civil war in 2003. The long-standing conflict put infrastructure maintenance and development to a halt, particularly in the area of water and sanitation, which led to a drop in access rates; a situation that continues to deteriorate in the unsewered informal settlements of Monrovia city, where 70 per cent of the city’s population live.

Through a community-driven approach, the project will seek to enhance capacity for sustainable city-wide fecal sludge management. This will complement efforts by the Government of Liberia and development partners to improve service access rates and reduce the vulnerability of the urban poor to diseases caused by water contamination resulting from open defecation and septic tank overflows. It is also expected to build donor confidence in Liberia.

The AWF grant will cover 86 per cent of the cost involved in the implementation of an effective, efficient and sustainable fecal sludge management system, which will include the construction and rehabilitation of sanitation infrastructure, as well as the production of affordable crop fertilizer from the fecal sludge collected from the tanks.

“We feel privileged to be given the opportunity to revive the water and sanitation sector in parts of Monrovia, and excited to be involved in a project designed to address the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens,” said Akissa Bahri, Coordinator, African Water Facility. “This is a smart project with a slew of all-round benefits bound to restore people’s health and dignity, boost the communities’ economic growth and enhance food security,” she added.

Some distinct features of the project include:

• the promotion of community-based enterprises and management teams to build local ownership;
• the involvement of local artisans for building the required septic tanks, as a way to create local employment;
• the use of a Public-Private-Partnership model for operating and maintaining the vehicles needed for emptying the tanks, to ensure service coverage in areas otherwise disregarded by the private sector; and
• the provision of technical assistance for devising an effective marketing and sales strategy to kick off the sale of fecal sludge fertilizer, to ensure a successful pitch to local farmers and boost sales.

It is hoped that the project will be scaled up to cover the entire unsewered areas of Monrovia, and replicated in other urban areas throughout Liberia.

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