SLIDING TO THE SLUM ~ PART I: THE QUESTION OF STRUCTURE

After taking a glance on the African historical antecedents as one of the causes for its current water issues, in the following posts I feel it would be interesting to explore how the structure or placement of the human settlements, and their distribution between rural and urban areas, influences the difficulties of accessing water and proper sanitation infrastructures. This unavoidably implies taking a glance at the slums or informal settlements found in great part of the African cities, where the highest rates of poverty and lack of hygienic lifestyles are reported.

THE CAUSE OF SLUMS

Nowadays, Africa has an urban growth rate of 4.8%, the fastest among all the continents (Kwasi Boadi et al., 2005). Much of this growth is noticed in large cities, mostly in the Sub-saharan region. The main causes for Africa's rapid urbanisation are the increase in the population, resulting from improvements in medical health care and disease control; and also the rural-urban migration (Kwasi Boadi et al., 2005). 

Nevertheless, we could say that the former boosted the latter.

Although the growth of African cities was in part focused at impulsing the rural sector, by importing agricultural products and thus promoting employment in those areas, this has not been accomplished: most urban cities directly import raw materials and cheap goods (as a result of trade liberalisation), with a consequently falling demand for local products. Also, transport and telecommunication systems are not developed enough, which causes failure of agricultural products to reach urban markets due to deplorable conditions of road infrastructure, for example (Kwasi Boadi et al., 2005).

On the other hand, the increase of population in rural areas created pressure on land and a subsequent reduction in farmland, which was already strongly affected by inequalities related to property distribution (for instance, white farmers owned 86% of South-African farmlands in 1991, with only the remaining 14% occupied by Africans, according to Kwasi Boadi et al., 2005). The resultant necessity of job opportunities forced rural people to migrate to cities (Boadi et al, 2005). In this process, which accentuated the yet quick urban growth, most of them established in slums and shantytowns. The main reason for this was the lack of financial resources resulting from the acute shortage of urban housing, caused by such rapid urbanisation. Consequently, substandard, informal housing units proliferated in what are called slums and squatter settlements, where poor people (the ones principally affected by other handicaps such as high rates of inflation and devaluation of currencies) spent more than 30-40% of their incomes in renting rooms or whole units (Kwasi Boadi et al., 2015). Nowadays, 62% of urban dwellers in Sub-saharan Africa are estimated to live in informal settlements (Okurut et al., 2014), and it is predicted that most future urban growth will occur in these same areas (Hopewell and Graham, 2014).

THE PROBLEM OF SLUMS

The population growth in cities has resulted in a generally increased consumption of resources, which relates to large amounts of waste that, due to inadequate infrastructures, are usually incorrectly disposed off by dumping in water bodies, open spaces and surface drains. Most African cities have precarious sewerage systems, and sometimes they are blocked with solid waste which ends up overflowing into open spaces (Kwasi Boadi et al., 2005). In addition to this, unsustainable use of water resulting from government subsidies often exceeds the regenerative capacity of water resources, and this creates water shortages. Thus, the economic crisis begun in the 1970s ended up in massive unemployment, rising corruption and financial misappropriation in cities, with a background of municipal authorities having difficulties in raising enough funds to meet their budgets and maintain services.

Adding gravity to the issue, this main problems become even bigger with the proliferation of the mentioned informal settlements and slums. Indeed, even though the reports of some African cities may show urban sanitation coverage of increasing percentages, no clear distinction is usually made between both those corresponding to the informal and the formal parts of the urban area (Okurut et al., 2014). In fact, the growth of urban population has already begun to affect progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (Hopewell and Graham, 2014), and one of the evidences of this is that in some cities the number of residents using the worst forms of sanitation or water supply has increased in the last years (Hopewell and Graham, 2014). This suggests that the proliferation of slums supposes an involution when it comes to water access and sanitation, among other basic necessities. Unhygienic human waste disposal practices frequent in low-income informal settlements suppose a risk to the health and water sources quality of not only the dwellers of these settlements, but also the adjacent areas (Okurut et al., 2014).

Lack of money and topography are some of the most significant barriers faced in building a household sanitation facility (in figure 1 some principal drawbacks are shown as reported in a study focused in three different cities, according to Okurut et al., 2014). The chaotic structure and hasty growth of slums has made them especially affected by these factors, as well as others related to culture and tenancy, for example. Below are some explanations of the main issues related to sanitation and water facilities. Although they can be reported in city centres, they have a special gravity in slums due to the lower affordability of their dwellers and some other worse conditions related to land or usage.

Figure 1. Most important barries for building a toilet for owner occupiers (in three different cities). Okurut et al., 2014.

THE AFFORDABILITY PROBLEM ~ As mentioned before, slums are inhabited by the poorest population, which has to spend a great part of the income in tenancy and usually has no money enough to afford other needs such as education. This point is characterised by the expensive cost not only of building proper sanitation facilities, but also of the emptying services. In many cases, the lack of affordability of this services causes people to dig new toilets in the ground when the initial ones fill up (Okurut et al., 2014). There are also cases in which an outlet is left on one side of the pit latrine in order for the faecal waste to be flushed by the surface runoff during rainy seasons. In some cities even though basic or improved facilities have been installed, rates of open defecation have increased due to high costs of water tariffs associated to the use of the systems (Nayebare et al., 2019). Open defecation reported in many cities is usually attributed to both the inability to afford construction and emptying services, and lack of space (Okurut et al., 2014).

THE PHYSICAL PROBLEM ~ One of the first drawbacks that can be detected in slums is the one related to the land where they are settled in. They are often lying on hilly slopes or wetlands that make it difficult to construct sanitation facilities: rocky grounds and high water tables, for instance, are the main obstacles in digging of pit latrines, while valley floors are highly prone to flooding (Okurut et al., 2014). One of the most important consequences of this scenario is people having to travel long distances in order use the facilities. When public toilets are so far away, and mostly at night, people usually opt to use polythene bags and dump them into the open (Okurut et al., 2014).

THE USAGE PROBLEM ~ Sanitation in informal settlements is often shared and lacks of privacy and dignity. Hygienic maintenance is also difficult, and that could help explain why in some areas technologies are implemented but not in good conditions, and therefore the rate of open defecation is high (Okurut et al., 2014). In addition, an incongruity has seemed to appear in some cities which have shown increasing rates of both access to improved sanitation and percentage of households practising open defecation, but the explanation could be that besides the existence of the facility, the quality and quantity of the water provided is still poor In areas with high population, standpipes (classified as ‘improved’ technology) may be close enough to households, but fail to provide a sufficient amount of water due to the big quantity of people sharing the system (Hopewell and Graham, 2014). The factor related to property ownership might be also increasing this problem, as the majority of inhabitants of informal settlements are tenants with stronger vincles with their rural origin and a certain reluctance to invest part of their income in improved sanitation facilities in the city (Okurut et al., 2014).

As shown, the factors influencing the problem on water and sanitation access in slums belong to a variety of areas, and are usually regarded using the variable of open defecation, practice that not only reflects the lack of effective systems, or of access to them, but also promotes the problem by increasing the rates of contamination in the same adjacent water sources, as well as general environmental features.