Understanding Small Scale Providers of Sanitation Services: a Case Study of Kibera

The Water and Sanitation Program is an June 2005 international partnership for improving water and sanitation sector policies, practices, and capacities to serve poor people Field Note Serving the Urban Poor Understanding Small Scale Providers of Sanitation Services: A Case Study of Kibera Little is understood of the work of Small Scale Providers of Sanitation Services and their central role in sanitation provision but now researchers and urban planners are starting to pay attention. Focusing on sanitation providers in the informal settlement of Kibera in Nairobi, this field note provides better understanding of who the SSPSS are, the range of services they offer, and recommends options for improving the quality and efficiency of their services. Introduction sector is increasingly attracting the and the quality and efficiency of the attention of researchers and planners in services they offer. non-governmental organizations Throughout the developing world many (NGOs), and development agencies. of the urban poor depend on informal, Kibera’s sanitation nightmare private small-scale providers for This field note is based on a preliminary sanitation services. These study carried out during 2003–04, and Kibera is composed of nine villages of builds on the work carried out by the entrepreneurs receive no government different sizes and population. Water and Sanitation Program-Africa resources but survive by offering Strategically placed to provide labor to (WSP–AF) since 1997. services that the consumers want and the industrial area and neighboring are willing to pay for. Until fairly residential areas, it is the largest The field research is based on recently Small Scale Providers (SSPs) informal settlement in Nairobi and were thought to offer only temporary, interviews conducted in Kibera with 51 home to more than a quarter of short-term solutions to the increasing service providers (14 groups or Nairobi’s estimated total population of and unmet demand for sanitation individual manual pit emptiers, 15 truck 2.3 million. It is the most densely services and were often ignored by emptier employees, 12 builders and populated area in sub-Saharan Africa government policy makers and donors. unskilled workers, and 10 public toilet employees or volunteer managers), 49 with 2,000 inhabitants per hectare. It is But there is growing recognition that a households, seven community-based estimated that on average, 3.4 people 2 meaningful response to the needs of organizations (CBOs), six NGOs, four occupy 10m single-room structures low-income and informal areas must international organizations, two Nairobi built from mud, timber and corrugated involve partnerships between small City Council officials, one consultant iron sheets. entrepreneurs and formal utilities. One of company and a Ministry of Health the reasons for this change in attitude is official. The purpose of the study is to The high population density, unplanned the persistent failure by municipalities provide a better understanding of who and crowded housing, and lack of and public utilities to meet service the SSPSS are, and the range of services infrastructure have resulted in poor demands in slum settlements that they offer, with a view to identifying and provision of environmental and social develop on the outskirts of cities and recommending improvements to the services. Most roads in Kibera are towns. This gap can be filled by SSPs environment within which they operate, inaccessible to vehicles, drainage who have shown remarkable resourcefulness in finding simple, but effective, solutions often under the most adverse operating conditions. Kibera a sprawling informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, is home to half a million people. Here, Small Scale Providers of Sanitation Services (SSPSS) play a central role in sanitation provision, including the management of public toilet blocks, the construction of latrines, and the removal of sludge. Until now, little work has been done to understand and evaluate the work of SSPs, but their importance in the Kibera’s streets are characterized by uncollected garbage and clogged drainage channels 2 Understanding Small Scale Providers of Sanitation Services: A Case Study of Kibera channels on the sides of the roads are Where neither private nor public often blocked, pit latrines overflow latrines are available, many residents (especially in the rainy season) and have had to resort to using plastic heaps of uncollected garbage are bags that are then dumped in alleys everywhere. and ditches – a practice called “flying toilets”. In the already overcrowded Kibera is gazetted as government land, slums lack of adequate water supply, much of which has been allocated solid waste management, excreta informally to ‘structure owners’ disposal, drainage and wastewater (because they do not own the land but management impact severely on public only the structures they have built. This health. Of the ten most widespread field note refers to them as ‘owners’). diseases in Kibera, five are linked directly to inadequate water and sanitation The temporary shelters that the owners provision (diarrhoea, skin diseases, erect are let to the vast number of typhoid, tuberculosis, malaria). laborers seeking daily employment in Nairobi. These structures have been Small scale providers subject to constant threats of of sanitation services A typical pit latrine in Kibera demolition by the City Council, and this understand the financial situation of insecurity of tenure has affected the There is a range of different private households served, can offer credit level of investment that structure enterprises in Kibera each offering facilities and respond quickly to owners and residents are willing to risk. specific service skills: consumer preferences. With the Long-term improvement projects are Latrine management; exception of public latrine also hampered by the fact that 90 · Latrine construction; and management, all the service providers percent of Kibera’s inhabitants are · Latrine emptying. are men. tenants and the owners, who live · elsewhere, have little incentive to These services are mostly offered by There is a great disparity in their provide services or improve living independent SSPs who are resident in revenues (see Graph 1) but they conditions in the settlement. the settlement and can deliver what compare favorably to the minimum public services are unable or unwilling wage for general laborers in Nairobi. Nairobi City Council does not provide to provide. Alternative providers These figures highlight the important sanitation services to Kibera. Although two sewer lines cross the settlement, most people rely on on-site sanitation. One latrine is often used by several 120 110 97 households or even several plots (a 100 ‘plot’ refers to a group of rooms either 80 72 58 belonging to the same owner or placed 60 46 side by side), which means up to 150 Income 40 33 18 people may be sharing a single latrine. 20 In many cases the latrines lack privacy 0 General laborer Volunteer EmployeeCertfied Manual Worker Driver and security, are unhygienic and in minimum Public toilets managers latrines builder exhauster Truck exhauster company employees wage in Nairobi poor condition with gaping holes in the Providers walls, broken doors and filled pits. 3 commercial potential of this sector, and reluctant to invest in local the need for government to recognize infrastructure because the and support the business opportunities infrastructure (investment) may be as well as the contributions made by demolished at any time. This may these providers in extending services explain why Kibera has only one to the poor. privately-operated public latrine, which was financed by a micro-credit SSPSS do not keep account of their loan for 35 percent (US$260) of the expenses, and cannot therefore total investment. The structure of this estimate their income relative to their public latrine is largely made from revenue. They have a broad idea of removable materials such as timber their revenue range, which can be and iron roofing sheets. compared to the general laborer minimum wage in Nairobi. Two externally funded pilot projects have introduced bio-digestion A public latrine funded by an NGO The business of operating technology into a public latrine block. This transforms the lined pit into a funding. The latrines are managed by and managing latrines digestion reactor producing biogas CBOs on a commercial or volunteer which can be used as an energy basis (volunteers often receive some There are six different models of compensation). Operation and source. If this proves to be a viable sanitation systems in Kibera, each maintenance costs are recovered by technology, the biogas could be used differing in ownership, access and levying a user service charge. to produce electricity and heat water management system (see Tables 1 and for showers. It should also help to 3). For pit latrines, the two main types The financial viability of the different tackle the problem of sludge disposal in Kibera are either lined or unlined. models of public toilet blocks has been since the process reduces the volume Public latrine blocks compared on the basis of their annual of excreta, and the resultant waste running costs in Table 2. material is less pathogenic. As Table 1 illustrates, municipal authorities neither own nor manage While unsecured land tenure does not An analysis of the three models of public latrines in Kibera. All but one of appear to hinder development public latrines shows that: the 20 toilet

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