Toilets in townships and informal settlements need to be improved. Photo: David Harrison/M&G
The stark reality of informal settlements in South Africa is daily evidence of the persistent inequalities that scar our nation, which drive migration and urbanisation, as people go in search of locations which offer jobs and better services.
Since 1994, the South African government has prioritised water and sanitation service delivery, striving to rectify historical inequalities and expand access to essential services. While progress has been made in services to informal settlements, the application of conventional centralised, or short-term emergency, service delivery models has often fallen short, particularly in reaching and effectively serving people in these types of communities, who can range from marginalised to indigent to low-income.
These communities frequently present unique challenges that conventional approaches struggle to address because they often settle in flood zones, settle illegally on public or private land earmarked for other purposes or settle in areas that cannot be connected to existing sewer networks due to overload.
Climate change events, such as increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather (droughts, floods), rising sea levels and changes in rainfall patterns, exacerbate vulnerabilities in these communities. These climatic shifts disrupt conventional service delivery models, increase the risk of disruptions and reduce infrastructure availability.
In addition, the topography, and the density of settlements in these communities, also make it difficult to deploy conventional technologies, infrastructure and centralised service delivery approaches.
While the government can invest in infrastructure and technology, the ability to pay for services makes the business case for long-term, sustainable services difficult to build.
The lack of services leads to open defecation, contaminated water resources and the spread of waterborne diseases. The lack of social organisation in informal settlements, where some residents are transient and others long-term, means low community intervention and poor ownership of the infrastructure and assets which are made available.
Exploring innovative sanitation solutions
In reaction to these challenges, the Water Research Commission (WRC) has explored decentralised technology and water-efficient technology options and engaged with key stakeholders on enabling the environment required to provide sustainable and long-term solutions.
The commission, in partnership with the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation and the Gates Foundation, has set up the South African Sanitation Technology Enterprise Programme (Sastep). This initiative, built on six core pillars, is designed to accelerate the adoption of sustainable and resilient, climate-smart and green sanitation technologies across South Africa. A key component of Sastep is its demonstration platform, which aims to fast-track technologies towards market readiness.
Making use of a non-sewered sanitation system (also referred as water-efficient sanitation) can be a viable alternative to conventional methods. These systems are modular, adaptable, scalable and can be implemented with minimal disruption to existing infrastructure.
Furthermore, they offer the potential for resource recovery, like recycling treated effluent for flushing, liquid fertiliser for community gardens and biogas production, transforming waste into valuable commodities.
This programme has been divided into four sub-programmes which deal with school “communal reinvent the toilet” (CRT) demonstrations, community-based CRTs for informal settlements, CRTs for green buildings and commercial nodes and CRTs for rural areas. The latter can be taken up by municipalities and by farming and business communities searching for improved, modern and convenient services.
Sastep also demonstrates complementary technologies, supports local and grassroots innovators in developing water-efficient, waterless and alternative systems and supports sludge-treatment solutions which produce useful products.
One of the aims of Sastep is to encourage businesses and innovators to improve their products by incorporating full-water recycle, fertiliser, valorised products and biogas-generation design into their technologies.
To this end, the WRC is working with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Department of Water and Sanitation and the SABS to make this technology standard. While the programme demonstrates selected technologies, it does not exclude any other green or sustainable technology designs, provided they are safe, meet the required standards and limit human contact with waste.
In partnership with the eThekwini Municipality and the City of Cape Town, the WRC is launching three types of CRT technologies in four sites in eThekwini and four in Cape Town. This launch aims to allow the WRC and the municipalities to document data and record lessons on capability needs and institutional models for further scale-up.
The Development Bank of South Africa will also partner to advise and develop finance models and standardised contracting frameworks to better manage decentralised infrastructure.
Climate-resilient sanitation: Adapting to a changing environment
The two municipalities are committed to scaling up CRT solutions to bridge sanitation service gaps and enhance disaster resilience. This modular, full-recycle system demonstrates how communities can recover more rapidly from floods and the resulting infrastructure damage, while mitigating the impact of droughts through water-independent sanitation.
As climate change intensifies, the need for resilient and adaptive sanitation solutions becomes increasingly urgent. With growing interest in strengthening the climate resilience of emerging sanitation technologies, water-efficient sanitation systems will be systematically assessed for their ability to function effectively under extreme climatic conditions such as prolonged droughts, heavy rainfall and flooding.
This structured assessment will focus on identifying the risks posed by climate hazards, evaluating how these sanitation technologies respond to these challenges and determining their long-term sustainability. Additionally, these systems will be reviewed for their alignment with existing disaster-management and emergency-response policies and guidelines. Ensuring compatibility with national and international frameworks will facilitate their integration into emergency response efforts, helping to restore sanitation services faster in disaster-stricken areas.
The Role of stakeholders: Government, private sector and NGOs
Transformative shifts in thinking about sanitation provision cannot be achieved in isolation. It demands a concerted effort from a diverse range of stakeholders, each playing a vital role in building a sustainable sanitation future.
Funders such as the Gates Foundation and Department of Science and Innovation, as well as the WRC, are important to research and scaling the research for implementation as such projects are costly. Johannesburg Water, an early partner on the Sastep programme, allowed the WRC to showcase, optimise and localise the technologies.
The eThekwini municipality and the City of Cape Town are demonstrating different technologies in informal settlements and planning for scale-up as they understand the technologies and apply the types of institutional models and management processes needed.
Innovators and researchers play a critical initial role in developing and testing the technologies while the licensed commercial partners support the installation, operations and maintenance and supply-chain development of the new technologies.
Community participation is essential for the success of any sanitation project. People must be empowered to take ownership of their sanitation systems to ensure sustainability of the systems.
Ednah Mamakoe is a technical officer at the Water Research Commission.
