Creating demand for urban sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa

Every hour, over 500 children die in Africa mainly due to diarrhoeal diseases. Human excreta is the principal cause of diarrhoea, which can be prevented by the installation and use of hygienic latrines, improved water supplies and hygiene practices. The number of people without access to basic sanitation facilities globally is over 2·6 billion, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The impact and public health risk of poor sanitation are more acute in urban communities as these tend to be more populated with less space to dispose of excreta and wastewater. Rapid urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa has made the task of providing sanitation even more challenging for municipal engineers and other professionals. An action research project aimed at applying a marketing approach to the promotion of household sanitation was carried out between 2002 and 2004, with a pilot project in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This paper is one of three papers on sanitation marketing and discusses consumer research for the marketing of household sanitation. It outlines the process that could be used by municipal engineers, non-government organisations and others to understand the demand for sanitation in order to improve public health, particularly in low-income urban settlements. The paper concludes that understanding consumer motivations, constraints and preferences for sanitation is a key factor in increasing the demand and uptake of improved latrines.