Financing sanitation and cost recovery in the slums of Dar es Salaam and Kampala

Improving sanitation for the poor requires better governance, more finance and mechanisms to generate revenue from sanitary facilities. There are a number of innovative approaches to sanitation in developing countries. Private pit latrines still provide 85% of the sanitation solutions for households in the slums of Dar es Salaam and Kampala. A distinction is made between household and shared toilets. Small scale entrepreneurs, Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) build maintain and sometimes empty usually shared sanitary facilities in a situation where the government is not able to provide sanitary services. Household level and private sector solutions are common in sanitation and can be encouraged. The repayment mechanisms in slums in the capitals of Tanzania and Uganda, the current mechanisms of financing sanitary facilities and recovering the cost using different governance structures are analyzed. Solutions are suggested based on the current practices. Governments could recognize the importance of what we call household level or private solutions and support them, for example by promoting more appropriate governance structures, cost recovery systems and reorganizing the emptying system to bring down the cost of emptying and involving small scale producers. It is recommended to promote more appropriate financing and governance mechanisms in the sanitation sector. [authors abstract]