BORDA SADC

Biogas DEWATS Challenge for On-site sanitation in Lesotho

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:20:00 MET

(1) Kitchen and animal waste because biogas for energy saving is needed --> But the organic load is to high for the wastewater treatment

(2)   Treated domestic wastewater for irrigating   food garden is needed
--> But not so much and not all the time

(3) Water temperature goes down to 9°C in winter time. -->Actually to cold for biological             treatment processes

(4) Can the construction not be done cheaper?
     --> On-site sanitation may not cost much, shall         be repaid within few years, shall bring clean water and much biogas

Those are the 4 major challenges facing the BORDA partner TED (Technologies for Economic Development) in Lesotho. But on the other hand, Lesotho is an ideal place for DEWATS application. Septic tanks with soak-away are either not allowed by authorities or do not work due to the ground texture. Regular empting of the septic tanks is expensive and the commercial utility can hardly serve the demand. Thus many private households, landlords of rental houses and institutions invest in a Biogas/DEWATS system provided by TED in cooperation with BORDA.

Sanitation Situation in Africa

Fri, 2 May 2008 14:50:00 MET

(Source: African Ministers’ Council Of Water (AMCOW) Can Africa Afford to Miss the Sanitation MDG Target?, report AFRICANSAN 2008; links: AfricaSan 2008: www.africasan2008.net; African Ministers’Council of Water: www.amcow.org )

“Every hour, a hundred African children die from diarrhoea- so started the final statement of 2002 AfricaSan conference. What has changed in the intervening 5 years? The 300 million Africans who did not have access to basic sanitation and hygiene in 2002 have increased , and if current trends continue by 2015 Africa will end up with 91 million more unserved than in 2004”.

Access to sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa is by no means ‘one‘ place, but the country profiles show some similarities in the issues faced by the majority of sub-Saharan countries. One of the biggest problems is the overwhelming weight of on-site sanitation, which places the emphasis for sanitation on households rather than service or utility providers. Other issues arise from the pace of demographic growth and rapid urbanization and growth of informal settlements.
All these elements (urbanization, population growth, on-site sanitation) are aggravated further by extent of poverty across the continent. The irony is that sanitation can considerable alleviate poverty, but because of poverty and competing priorities such as education and health, sanitation is too far down the priority list not only from the households, but for local, regional and national governments. Consequently, only about one third of Africa’s inhabitants have access to improve sanitation.

Figure 1 - Sanitation is improving worldwide... except for Sub-Saharan Africa (Source: UNDP;HDR 2006)

Sanitation News from WASAZA - BORDA Cooperation in Zambia

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:40:00 MET

by Jonathan Phiri (WASAZA) & Christopher Kellner (BORDA)

City Selection,
Community Selection,
Community Action Plan

There were many ladders to climb and hurdles to take for the 23 participants of a workshop, aiming to make a change in sanitation.
Target of the workshop was to show a way of treating wastewater and sewage in low income settlement areas. The location could not better selected, right in Ndola in the Copper Belt Region of Zambia. The area used to be rich and needed a lot of labour, but things have changed. The labourers offspring’s are still living in the same squatters as the bachelor governmental employees, but the families have grown and the pressure on the sanitation system as well. Until it collapsed. Drains are blocked, toilets dismantled. Out of 300 inhabitants in such a settlement area not a single one has a regular job. Survival means food in the first place the last point where the community can spend its scarce resources on, are better sanitation facilities and toilets. But they are very urgently required.

Africa challenges DEWATS-CBS

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:40:00 MET

DEWATS-CBS
has been developed and getting mainstreamed by BORDA network in Asia.
Now are the tasks to introduce DEWATS-CBS to Africa, to adapt
technology and social approaches and to build-up a efficient
implementation BORDA-SADC network. Those tasks are challenged by
following conditions:

- Prepared ground

Legal regulation, determined responsibilities of municipalities for sanitation service provision, willingness of individuals, institutions and municipalities in investing in sanitation services as well as the international supports of this sector, form the working ground for DEWATS-CBS in Africa. Countries like South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe have legal system established to regulate all water and sanitation affairs. Discharging of untreated wastewater is illegal and will be prosecuted. DEWATS is an appropriate and recognised option constructed with local resources. Generation and utilization of biogas and treated water merge the strong demand of many households and institutions in fuel and water restricted regions. Due to high population density and insufficient sanitary living conditions in per-urban und low-cost area in countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania or Uganda focus for basic need service will be mainly community based sanitation projects. Here helps especially the effort of the German development cooperation to consolidate and to structure the water and sanitation sector of municipalities in those countries.

DEWATS-CBS gaining ground in Southern Africa

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:20:00 MET

The DEWATS- CBS project in Southern African Development Countries (SADC) kicked-off through the cooperation with TED (Technology for Economic Development) in Lesotho beginning of 2007 after a six months warm-up phase. Tasks of that new cooperation office are a) to support TED’s efforts in a sustainable business growth in providing on-site sanitation to private and public markets. As an implementation NGO, TED develops and transfers economic and ecological technologies into their country and tries to combine commercial and non-commercial activities. Task b) of the TED-BORDA cooperation is to link-up TED with BORDA-SADC, to establish a network and to serve DEWATS-CBS learning and demonstration projects in the SADC countries like South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. It is a big challenge for the new team.

Project Managers Training for DEWATS - CBS Implementation

Fri, 7 Dec 2007 12:30:00 MET

A 10-day capacity building programme for Project Managers was held in Maseru, Lesotho, during August 13th through 22nd, 2007. The aim of the training programme was to transfer information on the main technical, social and implementation aspects of DEWATS-CBS to technical experts of BORDA Partner Organisations in the SADC region. This is part of the activities planned under the BORDA-supported Project: ‘Improving Community Sanitation, Decentralized Wastewater Treatment and Quality of Water Resources in Poor Urban Areas within the South African SADC Region’.

Demand for Basic Need Services in peri urban areas of Zambia and Tanzania

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:00:00 MET

By Andreas Schmidt, BORDA Cooperation Office SADC, Lesotho

In cities like Dar Es Salam and Lusaka up to 70% of the population live in peri urban areas. In both cities big efforts have been undertaken to provide the population with clean water as well as with sanitation with the support of international development co-operations.

First DEWATS plants in Southern Africa

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:40:00 MET

By Andreas Schmidt, BORDA Cooperation Office SADC, Lesotho

After a successful settling of BORDA in SADC the first DEWATS plants have been constructed and are going to be in operation soon. The co- operation with BORDA enabled our local partner TED (Technology for Economic Development) to expand it’s portfolio from small scale biogas plants to decentralized wastewater
treatment systems (DEWATS).

BORDA is back in Africa

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:40:00 MET

New project cooperation office started in SADC

Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA) is back in Africa. This time bringing its Community Based Sanitation and Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems (CBS-DEWATS) packages to Africa. The dissemination in Southern Africa is in collaboration with its Project Partner, Technologies for Economic Development (TED), in Lesotho.

BORDA established its Project Cooperation office at Maseru, Lesotho in July 2006. The objective of the BORDA-SADC initiative is to (a) build implementation capacity within public and private sectors, (b) demonstrate DEWATS-CBS successfully in urban/peri-urban low-income areas within 6 participating SADC countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) that will ultimately result in (c) the mainstreaming of DEWATS-CBS within the 6 target countries of the SADC Region.

Profiles of BORDA partner in SADC Region

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:10:00 MET

Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association (BORDA), and SANTREN, (Southern African Network for Training and Research on the Environment), initiated in 2005/06 a network of qualified partner organizations to prepare DEWATS-CBS demonstration projects in 6 countries of the southern African SADC-Region. This action was initiated on the basis of a high documented demand by southern African stakeholders of the region.