Situational Analysis of Access to Improved Sanitation in the Capital of Ethiopia and the Urgency of Adopting an Integrated Fecal Sludge Management (FSM) System

In the faces of alarming urbanization and the high demand for basic sanitation, there are debts that urban sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa has been steadily improving in one hand and worsening on the other hand in the recent decades. The objective of this research was to investigate the status of urban sanitation coverage in relation to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2015 target and the major gaps of fecal sludge management (FSM) system. For this purpose, we conducted the sanitation coverage survey in the urban slums of Addis Ababa and we compared it with the nationwide sanitation inventory conducted by Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy (EMWIE) in 2014. The results revealed that only 11.4% of urban slum residents have access to improved sanitation. This sanitation coverage is by far lower than the improved sanitation coverage of the capital city (41.2%) and the national urban sanitation coverage (27%). Open defecation being a common practice in urban areas of Ethiopia accounts 8.2%, 5.8% and 8.0% for urban slums of the capital and all urban areas of the country respectively. Despite the increasing trend in urban sanitation coverage in Ethiopia, it is far from the MDG target and the majority of urban residents are living under severe health and environmental risks. The urban poor are the ones mainly excluded from the basic sanitation services. Most sanitation facilities (about 91%) in Addis Ababa are onsite sanitation that requires pit emptying nevertheless 85.4% of the residents dissatisfied with the pit emptying services. As results of the severe constraints of pit emptying and FSM services, most toilet facilities (about 50%) were full. The FSM system is totally ineffective to tackle environmental pollution and public health risks. This calls an urgent action towards the development of integrated FSM system that ensures environmental safety and targets valorization of human waste