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| Marketing
Sanitation in Africa
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When Water is difficult
to access as in many developing countries, flush toilets become
difficult to maintain and use.
Politicians are finally becoming interested in sanitation. Ministers
at the Johannesburg summit, at the Group of 8 at Evian, at the
World Economic Summit are endorsing the millennium development
goal to halve the proportion of people in the world without
adequate sanitation by 2015.
Hygiene Centre members are working to help make this happen.
Dr Mimi Jenkins, an expert in consumer attitudes to sanitation,
organised a 'think tank' meeting in June 2003 to help the World
Bank's Water and Sanitation Programme work out how best to market
sanitation, since this looks like the best way to meet this
target. |
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| When Water is difficult to access
as in many developing countries,
flush toilets become difficult to maintain and use. |
| In particular they examined
new ways in which those who build latrines, usually masons
in the informal sector,build a sustainable sanitation industry
in the developing countries. |
A group of
experts joined Centre members, led by Dr Jenkins, to pool
their experiences and research, and explore the potential
contribution marketing approaches may be able to bring to
the problem of a lack of sanitation in Africa. These experts
were drawn from the public and private sectors in sanitation,
social marketing, commercial marketing and private sector
development. The consensus at the meeting was that no other
approach was likely to achieve the Millennium Development
Goals established at the World Summit in Johannesburg to halve
the proportion of people without access to sanitation by 2015.
Local low-cost pit latrines provide basic
sanitation and offer consumers many benefits beyond health.
Currently 2.4 billion people on the planet, living mostly
in Africa, lack sanitation. The Hygiene Centre is working
with WEDC and partners in Ghana and Tanzania in operational
research to test the hypothesis that marketing sanitation
to households can cost-effectively accelerate the uptake of
toilets in Africa among households that currently do not have
one. At the same time, lives are saved and the standard of
living in these countries is improved. |
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Local
Low-cost pit latrines provide basic sanitation and
offer consumers many benefits beyond health |
Two projects are currently
underway. Mimi
Jenkins and Val
Curtis are working on Social
Marketing for Sanitation in collaboration with WEDC in
Loughborough, Trend Ghana and Water Aid Tanzania. Funding
has been awarded by DFID Knowledge and Research Programme.
Colin
McCubbin, Sandy
Cairncross and Mimi Jenkins are working together on Programme
Design Factors for Sustainable Sanitation which will have
a research base in Tanzania.
Documents accompanying the meeting are
available. For further information contact Mimi
Jenkins.
You can also find out more by reading
the Marketing Sanitation in Africa - Meeting
Summary. |
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