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Capacity-Linked water supply and sanitation improvement for Africa's peri-urban and Rural Areas

Periodic Report Summary 2 - CLARA (Capacity-Linked water supply and sanitation improvement for Africa's peri-urban and Rural Areas)

Project Context and Objectives:
There are a large number of small communities and towns in Africa that suffer from severe problems with water supply and sanitation. Small communities in rural areas and peri-urban areas of small towns have comparable settlement structures in which reuse of water and use of sanitation products can be utilized. However, there is only limited local capacity to adopt, implement and operate integrated water supply and sanitation.
CLARA's overall objective was to strengthen the local capacity in the water supply and sanitation sector. From a technological point of view, existing low cost technologies for decentralized water supply and sanitation systems shall be assessed and adapted for African conditions with the focus on reducing risks in use and reuse of water and sanitation products, and providing demand oriented water quality. Based on these technological improvements and the experiences from the FP6 projects ROSA (http://rosa.boku.ac.at/) and NETSSAF, a simplified planning tool for integrated water supply and sanitation systems for small communities and peri-urban areas shall be developed that incorporates the key factors for success, i.e. operation and maintenance issues and reuse potential, form the beginning of the planning process, and that can be tailored to available local capacities. This simplified integrated CLARA planning tool shall then be tested and evaluated in different geographical African regions to incorporate different economic, cultural and social boundary conditions. For the communities participating in the planning process, application documents will be prepared as a final output that serve as basis to ask for funding of their implementation plans for integrated water supply and sanitation.
The CLARA project (Capacity-Linked water supply and sanitation improvement for Africa’s peri-urban and Rural Areas) started in March 2011 with duration of 3 years. CLARA is coordinated by BOKU University, Austria, and has 15 partners. Besides BOKU there are 3 more European partners that have been all partners in ROSA and/or NETSSAF: EcoSan Club Austria (was partner in ROSA and NETSSAF), ttz Bremerhaven, Germany (the coordinator of NETSSAF), and BIOAZUL, Spain (partner in NETSSAF). The African partners cover 4 geographical regions: Eastern Africa (Ethiopia and Kenya), Southern Africa (South Africa), Western Africa (Burkina Faso) and Northern Africa (Morocco and Tunisia). From the African partners Egerton University (Kenya), Arba Minch University and Arba Minch Water Supply and Sewerage Enterprise (both from Ethiopia) have been partners in ROSA whereas WSA (Water and Sanitation for Africa, formerly CREPA, Burkina Faso) was partner in NETSSAF.
To include the relevant partners for the field research in Arba Minch besides the ROSA partners AMU (Arba Minch University) and AWSSE (Arba Minch Water Supply and Sewerage Enterprise) also the following partners have been included in the project:
- Arba Minch Town Municipality (AMTM)
- 'Engan New Mayet' Compost Production Youth Association (EMN)
- 'Wubet le Arba Minch' Solid Waste Collectors Association (SWCA)
- Arba Minch Health Center (AMHC)
The Ethiopian partners were mainly responsible to carry out the field research in Arba Minch. The incorporation of two SMEs, EMN and SWCA, which are already working and sanitation related activities to produce sanitation products (co-composting and transport of urine and faeces, respectively), is essential to get the micro enterprise view of the sanitation business. To include the business point of view in the process is essential for sustainable implementation of the sanitation systems.
The African partners WSA, Egerton University, ONEP (Office National de lEau Potable, Morocco) and WRC (Water Research Commission, South Africa) are responsible for the case studies in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa, respectively. CBS (Centre of Biotechnology of Sfax, Tunisia) is an African research partner.

Project Results:
The work in CLARA was carried out in 3 main fields: i) field research, ii) development of the CLARA Simplified Planning Tool, and iii) case studies.
i) Field research
CLARA field research in Arba Minch was carried out in 3 main topics:
1. Solutions for multi-story buildings (MSBs) and health impacts
MSBs have been introduced in Arba Minch and other Ethiopian cities as condominium houses. They are usually constructed at the edge of the city boundaries and have a standardized design which includes flush toilets. Most of the time, such as in Arba Minch, 24/7 water supply is not available thus flush toilets are not working properly. Measures to reduce water consumption of the MSBs by resources-oriented solutions have been researched with the main aim to provide enough water for toilet flushing.
2. Sludge treatment, co-composting and urine conditioning methods
Within ROSA several types of toilets that allow reuse (i.e. UDDTs and fossa alternas) have been constructed in private houses, institutions and schools. Transport of urine and faeces was done by solid waste collectors. Faeces were transported to ENM for co-composting where experiments for optimising the process started. AMU researches urine conditioning methods (production of struvite from urine) which shall reduce problems in handling urine (e.g. large volume and nitrogen loss).
3. Operation and maintenance (O&M) and financing mechanisms
O&M is of high importance for sustainable implementation of sanitation systems. Based on the existing installations current O&M practices were analysed and optimized. The incorporation of private businesses as sanitation service providers and the barriers towards this were analysed by the means of e.g. business plans.
ii) Development of the CLARA Simplified Planning Tool
In CLARA we did not aim to define a new overall planning approach, however, the CLARA Simplified Planning Tool (SPT) aims to provide the missing link for the technical part of the overall planning process by supporting local planners to find the best solution for water supply and sanitation in the planning objective. By using the tool it is possible to compare the real costs of various alternatives of water supply and sanitation systems. Environmental, social and health aspects are not considered explicitly since it is assumed that these aspects are already considered in the framework conditions, i.e. it is assumed that all systems fulfilling the legal requirements benefit environment and health and are socially appropriate. That means that the tool cannot be used to compare a solution that fulfils legal requirements with e.g. the solution "no sanitation facilities" as these 2 alternatives do not have the same impact. However, the tool can be used to compare e.g. water-borne and dry sanitation systems.
iii) Case studies
The CLARA SPT was tested and evaluated in Arba Minch and in the CLARA pilot communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco and South Africa. At all case study sites a planning process for an integrated water supply and sanitation system for the pilot communities was carried out. Within the process the CLARA SPT was used for evaluating different alternative system solutions. After evaluating the results the African CLARA partners were in charge to prepare application documents that allowed the pilot communities to request donor money. The application documents were prepared in the format as required by the donors, e.g. the African Water Facility or similar.

Potential Impact:
The results of CLARA have been published in a special issue of the Sustainable Sanitation Practice (SSP) journal (issue 19, April 2014, ISSN 2308-5797). SSP is a quarterly published online journal and is available for free from http://www.ecosan.at/ssp.
The documentation "Agriculture, food and water technologies" was produced and is available on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp8coUMPlJg&app=desktop).

The executive summary of the results in the CLARA's 3 main work fields are:
i) Field research
1. Operation and maintenance and financing mechanisms: Small enterprises active in the sanitation sector can make profit. However, to compare these enterprises with "normal" business is not fair. It is crucial that municipalities recognise that these enterprises provide services that are actually a duty of the municipality and also support these enterprises to make the business profitable. Public-private-partnership can serve as model for the collaboration between private sector and municipalities.
2. Sludge treatment, co-composting and urine conditioning methods: Producing struvite from source-separated urine in Arba Minch has been shown to be not economically feasible. This is mainly due to the fact that artificial fertilizers are heavily subsidised in Ethiopia and thus much cheaper than struvite.
3. Solutions for multi-story buildings and health impacts: When using flush toilets in areas with limited public water supply (e.g. for the condominium houses in Arba Minch) it is essential that alternative water sources are considered during planning. This is essential to guarantee the functioning of the flush toilets and thus preventing health hazards.
ii) Development of the CLARA Simplified Planning Tool
The development of the CLARA Simplified Planning Tool (SPT) was for sure one of the main achievements of the project. After testing the tool and presenting it to various stakeholders that feedback that we received showed that:
• The value of the CLARA SPT is apparent when investigating alternative water supply and sanitation solutions and evaluating the differences between the alternatives. Adjustments can be made at various cost or input data levels to compare different perspectives within the same actual scenario.
• The SPT has the potential to inform planners, engineers and municipal management of the longer term cost implications and thus the viability of various system options for a municipality and thus, contribute to the promotion of sustainable long term plans for communities.
The CLARA Simplified Planning Tool (SPT) was developed and made available for download from http://clara.boku.ac.at/ free of charge. The SPT was also made available via the SSWM Toolbox and promoted in the SuSanA Forum.
iii) Case studies
A key element of CLARA was that the local teams had to prepare applications documents so that the pilot communities can ask for funding from donors for implementation.
• The follow-up project in Arba Minch funded by the African Water Facility is already on track and shall start in July 2014.
• Implementation of solutions suggested by CLARA has been guaranteed for Frasers community in South Africa (by eThekwini municipality) and for Ait Idir in Morocco (due to the cooperation with the SWIM project).

List of Websites:
http://clara.boku.ac.at/