Financing of sanitation services in the slums of Kampala and Dar es Salaam

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the extent and conditions under which private financing can be a realistic approach for sanitation in slums. It is based on a cross-sectional study comparing two slum communities in East Africa, where 250 households from Bwaise III in Kampala, Uganda and 379 households from Temeke in Dar es Sa-laam, Tanzania were interviewed in 2010. Also, 10 key-informant interviews and 8 focus group discussions were conducted in addition to field observations. Findings show that majority (85%) of households used unimproved, private-shared pit latrines. These privately owned latrines had many structural shortfalls besides poor opera-tion and maintenance while the public latrines provided by third-party were structurally sound but were underutilized in residential slum neigh-borhoods. This is attributed to the presence free or at least cheaper alternatives which the com-munity members preferred instead of paying per-visit user-fees. For the few who were willing to pay, willingness to pay was positively asso-ciated with the presence of a facility User com-mittee and having been sensitized. In this con-text, a combination of these factors made cost recovery as well as operation and maintenance very minimal. The poor status of privately owned shared pit latrines matched the limited income levels of households. Similarly, cost recovery for public facilities was dependent on the num-ber of users who were willing to pay: the more the users, the more the cost recovery. A combi-nation of private and public financing is thus necessary to fund different but complementary aspects of sanitation in slums.