Hello everyone,

I am an intern currently working at pS-Eau on this research on sanitation in small towns.
By “small town” we are trying to consider towns that are sufficiently dense to be out of the rural perimeter, with a growing population and economy and which are starting to adopt urban characteristics while still having some rural practices. Faecal sludge management is generally not functional in these small towns, as viability (technological, financial etc.) of the services is a challenge. To give a global order of magnitude, we are considering towns with a population ranging from 3,000 to 100,000 (more or less) inhabitants.

The study realised by the group of students from Cranfield University allowed us to get a first overview of the existing experiences described by the literature as well as an idea of the challenges related to the development of sanitation services in small towns. The group’s study gave us good knowledge about this through a literature review and several interviews of key sanitation experts.
Considering this study, I am now going on with it in order to identify other interesting experiences of sanitation in small towns, especially by trying to find some areas where we can get some information from the literature about the actual situation of the services. This will allow us to go further from development project and consider as well settlements where organized FSM exist without having been developed by external organisations.

I am currently trying to focus this research in pS-Eau focus countries, which include Burkina Faso, Senegal, Niger, Benin, Mali, Togo, Liban, Madagascar. But, I am also really interested in information about sanitation in small towns in countries like Ghana, Cameroun, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania etc. If you have specific knowledge about it or if you know people who could support this study, I would be really pleased that you share it to me (you can write directly to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

For your information, this study also feeds in the research of another running programme on sanitation in small towns in Senegal, led by pS-Eau in partnership with Eau Vive, the University of Dakar, GRET and CONGAD.

Regards,
Simon

Dear Elisabeth,

Thank you for your reply.

The study is now finished and the report was published on the pS-Eau Website: www.pseau.org/fr/services-dassainissement-dans-petits-centres

Regards,

Annette Butty

Dear Annette,

I'm sorry your question here didn't get any responses so far. Is it now too late? Is your project finished?

It wasn't real clear to me what kind of case studies you were after. There are so many case studies already in the SuSanA library (www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resource...publications/library). Had you looked through those and concluded it wasn't enough?

Also, you characterised your small towns in terms of number of residents. But there are probably other factors that are more important regarding sanitation options, namely population density, climate, water availability, income levels, options for agricultural activities.

I am curious to know how far you got in the meantime and what PS-Eau is planning to do with your results?

Regards,
Elisabeth

As part of our MSc at Cranfield University, we are conducting a group project in partnership with pS - Eau on small towns in developing countries and the challenges they face throughout the whole sanitation service chain. We are looking for case studies of current examples of both successful and unsuccessful projects.

The major questions we aim to answer are:
•What experiences of full sanitation chain in small towns do we know?
•What are the specificities and the constraints do small towns face regarding their sanitation services?
•Which lessons can we learn from the identified experiences?

For this research question we have defined the parameters of a small town. The population must be between 2,000 and 100,000, whilst capital cities and peri urban areas have been excluded as they benefit from services or infrastructure of the nearby cities.

We are looking for additional case studies, as well as people’s experiences working with sanitation in small towns in low and middle-income countries, including successes, failures and lessons learnt. If you have relevant case studies or willing to be interviewed please respond directly to this post or contact us via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Thank you in advance.

Annette Butty and the team