Safe Sanitation Solutions
P4G Theme
Digital Solutions for Water
SDG
Status
Completed
Partnership Type
Start-up
Countries of Operation
Kenya ,
About
The Safe Sanitation Solutions partnership provides residents of low-income areas in Kisumu City, Kenya with access to safe, clean and affordable container-based toilets. It safely contains and treats fecal waste from the community that would otherwise be disposed in the open environment.
Investing in Impact
P4G provided the partnership with $100,000 in grant funding.
Kisumu City has an estimated population of 500,000 people with 60% living in informal settlements where waste is not safely managed. Only 18% of Kisumu City residents have access to the city’s sewer system. This has resulted in the majority of sanitation waste from informal settlements ending up in Lake Victoria, one of East Africa’s most vital water sources.
Safe Sanitation Solutions provides residents of urban informal settlements of Kisumu City with low-cost, high-quality sanitation facilities that are manufactured locally and that are designed for the densely populated informal settlements. The container-based dry technology system of the toilets ensures that fecal waste that would have been disposed of in the open environment is safely contained and removed from the community. This technology also reduces demand for valuable water resources as the toilets do not require flushing.
These locally manufactured facilities can easily fit inside one-room households and are operated by residents as small businesses or as a value-add service to their customers, such as tenants in the residential context or students at schools. Safe Sanitation Solutions provides strong customer support to its customers through a free mobile application where customers can share feedback, report maintenance issues, make referrals and make a monthly subsidized payment for regular waste collection and maintenance services.
The partnership provides low-income communities with safe sanitation facilities that are at least three times more affordable than what they would have paid to use a public toilet located outside of a residential compound or school because of its model of community subscription payments.
During the P4G funding period, the partnership launched 478 container-based toilets. By the end of 2022, it had an active network of more 660 container-based toilets serving more than 17,000 Kisumu residents. The partnership trained 650 toilet operators and safely removed and treated more than 690 metric tons of container-based waste.
The partners in the partnerships have renewed their commitment with a 5-year Memorandum of Understanding and the partnership plans to serve more Kisumu residents in the Obunga and Manyatta informal settlements. It will also continue to conduct fundraising activities to assess leads and grow its pipeline.
Partners
