The Second East Africa Sanitation Conference, organized by ANEW − the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation, was held in Kampala during 2−4 March (the East African countries involved are Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan North and South, Tanzania and Uganda).
The final point of the conference Declaration is disturbing: the conference participants noted their “shared concern regarding the inadequate commitment of AMCOW to sanitation and hygiene”. So why isn’t AMCOW – the African Ministers’ Council on Water – doing its bit for sanitation and hygiene? Well, you could argue that it’s doing something – there’s a whole section on sanitation at least in the Roadmap for the Implementation of the Sharm El-Sheikh Commitment (dated 13 November 2009), but ANEW doesn’t seem to think this is enough. We should be told all the details − and soon, as AfricaSan3 is going to be held next year.
About Me
- Duncan Mara
- University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.