There are a range of sanitation options in Kumasi, Ghana, though none are perfect. The following few pages represent most of the existing options as we observed them, in order of their desirability.

Existing Sanitation Options

With public toilets costing between 3 and 15 cents per use, it can be a significant financial burden for an entire family to use them every day. This leads many to resort to open defecation, a practice that spreads disease and contaminates water, while also bringing shame upon the person. We saw this more frequently in peri-urban areas or by children in urban areas. There are generally contained areas for open defecation, like cemetaries or areas near the public toilets.

Open Defecation

To avoid the shame that comes with open defecation, or to prevent an inconvenient trip to the public toilets in the dark of the night, many people will use a chamber pot and empty its contents into a plastic bag the following morning. Known as “flying toilets,” these bags are often tossed in roadside ditches, garbage piles, or, as in this picture, waterways.

Flying Toilets

A bucket latrine is a metal or plastic bucket enclosed in a wooden box/seat, built into a small privacy room in the common area of a multi-family compound. They’re locked to prevent use by outsiders, and are emptied every few days by a night-soil collector from a trap-door in the back of the privacy room. The cost of the collection services is generally shared between the members of the compound. These latrines were outlawed in the 1990’s because the night-soil collectors were often dumping their contents onto the street and encouraging the spread of disease, but can still be found in parts of Ghana. We noticed these were more prevalent in Accra than in Kumasi.

Bucket Latrines

Originally built around markets and other publicspaces, public toilets became the norm for the majority of urban Ghanaians with the outlawing of bucket latrines. They’re generally blocks of 15-20 squatting stalls with minimal (if any) privacy, and varying degrees of cleanliness. They cost between 3 and 20 cents each use, with long queues in the mornings and evenings, and rarely with water to wash your hands. Strips of newspaper are often provided for wiping. For some public toilets, children are allowed in for free. When they are not, theyoftentimes do not use the public toilets and resort to open defecation.

Public Toilets

Albeit few, some households have been able to save the $500-$1000 necessary to build a basic latrine in their homes. They’re generally not much more than an underground collection tank with a privacy shelter built overhead and a squatting/sitting toilet inside, but they offer significant convenience and health benefits to their owners. Every few years, though, they must empty the waste with a vacuum truck (a few hundred dollars per tank), which takes it to the city’s landfill to dump it. Alternative models, like the Kumasi Improved Ventilated Pits, offerimprovements like ventilation and the ability to use two tanks to turn the waste into compost (eliminating the need for vacuum trucks) but these require more upfront investment. Additionally, KVIP’s may not, despite their name, be suitable for Kumasi because the soil content and water tables in the area aren’t well suited for the design.

Pit Latrines and Water Closets

Although Kumasi does have a sewer system and three waste-water treatment plants, there are only about a thousand homes connected to it in a city of over a million residents. And, unfortunately, maintenance is challenging for the cash-strapped government, so any plans toexpand the sewer’s reach would be expensive and difficult.

Municipal Sewer System

Thank you!

IDEO, Unilever, and Water and Sanitation for the Urban PoorHousehold Toilet Project for Kumasi, GhanaDecember 15, 2010

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