ABSTRACT
The importance of good urban sanitation and solid waste management infrastructure has been widely documented (Cairncross and Feachem 1983: 3; Tchobanoglous, Theisen et al. 1993: 3; IETC 1996). Hutton and Haller (2004: 35) show that every dollar spent in Sub-Saharan Africa on improved water and sanitation yields from 5 to 15 dollars in terms of time savings associated with better access to water and sanitation facilities, gain in productive time, costs saved due to less treatment of diseases and deaths prevented. Accordingly, local and international stakeholders spend much effort improving access to adequate household sanitation infrastructure. Most widely known are the programs undertaken to reach the water and sanitation targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals of water and sanitation. This chapter first reviews the state of the sanitation and solid waste management service provision in East Africa and then looks at innovative and effective new approaches from a technological perspective. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the recovery of resources from urban wastes so that waste handling may become a driver for new economic developments and enhance environmental sustainability. In the framework of the Modernised Mixtures approach, adaptive and diverse policies on service provision are proposed based on multi-stakeholder participation.
