Local Sanitation Practices Study, Wa, Ghana, 2022

Access to safely managed sanitation in Ghana is low. The Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) estimated in 2021 that access to safely managed sanitation in Ghana is less than 15% with about 17.8% of the population still practicing open defecation. Whereas modest progress has been made in the provisioning of sanitation facilities in Ghana, progress is not even across all the phases of the sanitation value chain. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at safely managed sanitation for all by the year 2030, safely managed sanitation in recent times has received considerable attention in research and policy as a way of improving sanitation services especially in cities and peri-urban areas in developing countries. In the Towards Brown Gold project, IWMI analysed the current sanitation practices in Wa, a rapidly urbanizing secondary city in the Upper West region of Ghana to gain insights into the existing sanitation systems as experienced by local communities. The study also explored cultural and social attitudes toward Fecal Sludge Management (FSM) and identified potential circular pathways that fit the local context. Key findings from the study include the following:

• Achieving safely managed sanitation involves going beyond merely providing toilets and instead considering the sanitation value chain as a comprehensive system. A breakdown at any stage within this chain can lead to failure across the entire system.

• Poor sanitation in Ghana is linked to unclear guidelines for liquid waste and fecal sludge management (FSM), high costs of sanitation facilities and inadequate personnel to implement and enforce policies.

• Key factors affecting sanitation behaviors in Wa include social norms, availability of functional private or public toilets, sanitation product attributes, financial capacity to build private latrines, household prioritization of latrines and lack of sanitation by-laws.

• In Wa, cereal farmers often resort to informal use of FS for farming, partly due to the rising costs of chemical fertilizers. Although the disposal of FS onto agricultural land is officially prohibited, it operates in a gray area where tacit approval prevails, as farmers and cesspit truck drivers have not faced repercussions. This situation persists in Wa due to the absence of engineered or official dumping sites and the municipal assembly's failure to provide alternative solutions.

• Circular models and resource recovery from FS and other organic waste streams have the potential to provide a win-win situation by reducing waste flows, ensuring environmental health, recovering costs and creating livelihoods.