Dear all,

First, allow me to introduce myself. I am Hanns-André Pitot, since 2008 technical advisor in the fields of water and sanitation in Adjumani, Northern Uganda. I am working for GIZ (formerly DED) and advising the Town Council of Adjumani. I am an engineer for environmental pollution control with a M.Eng. degree from the United States, and (still) a national of Mauritius.

I have placed two sets of photos on the Flickr page of „Sustainable Sanitation“ depicting the sanitation work we have been doing in Adjumani:
Http://www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/sets/72157630727680876/
Http://www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/sets/72157631160051774/

The first set of photos deals with our (that is GIZ and the Adjumani Town Council) approach to sanitation and waste management during the last couple of years, the second set of photos shows ecosan toilets that have been constructed by private means - partly initiated by our work at the Town Council. The photos come with detailed explanations, so that I won’t give details here.

In Adjumani, we have been following a „two track approach“ to sanitation and solid waste. The first track addresses existing sanitation systems and consists of the disposal of sludge from latrines and septic tanks in a constructed wetland system. The second track comprises of the promotion of ecological sanitation (UDDTs and a new design of composting toilets), and of a small manually operated composting facility where both the solids from ecosan toilets and organic waste from the town area are processed. As a financing instrument, there is a surcharge on piped water that we are using to finance support for the construction of ecosan toilets (the ones shown in the 2nd set of photos) and the purchase of compost for city greening purposes from the facility.

In recent times, there has been a lot of talk of reinventing the toilet to suit the needs of the very poor in developing countries. Our low-cost model of a UDDT as depicted in the first set of photos is costing less than 2 US cents per day per person (assume a 10 year life span, 5% interest on capital, and five users). As it turns out in Adjumani, they are still too expensive to be constructed by the very poor. It’s predominantly more affluent people who have ecosan toilets constructed either for themselves or for apartment complexes. The 2nd set of photos is showing the ones that have been finalized.

In terms of future additions to the system, we are planning to construct more demonstration toilets, and five shared ecosan toilets for clusters of very poor residents. In addition, we are thinking of a small bore sewage system for the town center with low-cost wetland treatment and irrigation of the treated water.

If there are any questions about the photos, I would be happy to answer them.

Kind regards to everybody,

Hanns-André

P.S. As an eye catcher, see here one photo out of the set where the link is given above:

Low cost toilet by Sustainable sanitation, on Flickr

Thanks for those interesting pictures Hanns-André.

I will be actually working with UWASNET in Uganda starting at the end of this year so I am naturally interested in eco-san projects in Uganda. Would it be possible to get into contact with you sometimes in November, or early next year to share some experiences you had with UDDT in Uganda?

Dear JK,

as per our present planning, I should be stationed in Adjumani until the end of 2012, so that we could possibly meet at the end of this year either in Kampala or in Adjumani itself. I would be happy to take you or anybody else for a tour in Adjumani. I suggest you first contact me by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Kind regards,

Hanns-Andre

Ok great, I will send you a message once I know in more detail how my assignment will be organised in the first couple of weeks. Perfect would be of course if I could visit Adjumani, but I doubt that will be possible still in 2012.