Initiative description

Background and context

Kampala’s sanitation is characterised by both onsite and off-site infrastructure. Of these, onsite is dominant, with households mostly using pit latrines. This makes pit emptying and safe waste treatment critically important, as poor disposal poses serious health risks. For example, between 2010 and 2017, Kampala had several epidemic outbreaks of cholera and typhoid – causing several hundred deaths, health anxieties in the city, as well as high financial costs for both individuals and the government to mitigate and stop the disease outbreaks.

Kampala’s urban planning regulations, both from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the city urban planning department, require that houses are connected either to the national sewer network or to septic tanks to allow cesspool emptying. However, only 2% of households in Kampala have their toilets flush to sewer and only 28% to septic tanks (Bateganya et al., 2019). The remaining majority is served by other well documented technologies, such as pit latrines and associated emptying services. One of these is the gulper, a manually operated pump for emptying septic tanks or pit latrine content into a container, which was originally developed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as an alternative technology (LSTHM, nd). In informal settlements, the gulper has a niche over other emptying technologies like the cesspool, particularly where roads and pathways to people’s homes are rather narrow and infrastructural limitations mean that many toilet facilities cannot be accessed by large cesspit-emptying trucks (Semiyaga et al., 2022). In Kampala, residents of informal settlements such as Kibuye have reported having their pit latrines and toilets locked down during Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) inspections, for not meeting sanitary requirements (Nakyagaba et al., 2021). The gulper technology attempts to solve problems like this, because the emptying equipment can be carried on a small tricycle through informal settlements’ access paths, enabling it to reach those facilities.

The cost of hiring gulper services is more affordable than those of the next alternative, cesspit emptying trucks. Gulper collection can also be done per 200 litres, at a rate of around UGX 20-30,000 (USD 5-8) per 200 litre barrel of sludge removed – enabling low-income households to spend only what they are willing and able. For a pit latrine, this allows sludge to be removed from a depth of approximately 1.5m into a 200 litre barrel. In contrast, cesspool services such as cesspool trucks, while offering a bigger capacity, require a single down payment of at least UGX 250,000 (USD 67), ten times more than the gulper costs and one which many households cannot afford. In addition, KCCA does not provide free waste management and/or subsidised sanitation services in informal settlements, leaving these exclusively to the private sector, at higher costs to households. For example, households are now asked to pay around UGX 25,000 (USD 7) per month for solid waste collection. When solid waste collection is unaffordable, many households resort to disposing of their solid waste irregularly, including into pit latrines, causing these to fill up quickly and presenting emptying challenges because cesspool hose pipes are not designed to transport waste other than faecal sludge. Gulpers, in contrast, can facilitate removal of solid waste as well as faeces during the emptying process, again making them preferred in informal settlement communities. These advantages have prompted KCCA to license and pilot the gulper technology across Kampala, as described in this ACRC urban reform case study.

Summary of initiative

Prior to the gulper, Kampala had seen pilots of onsite sanitation technologies (for example, urine-diverting dry toilets) through projects including the 2013-17 Kawempe Urban Poor Sanitation Improvement Project (KUPSIP) and introduced by local NGOs, including Community Integrated Development Initiatives (CIDI Uganda) and ACT Together Uganda. Most of these earlier toilet technologies were implemented in low-income and informal settlements with the goal of improving sanitation in areas not reached by city sewer lines. Despite the precedent for onsite sanitation technologies, in 2015 several unauthorised gulper operators were arrested by KCCA for using an unlicensed technology and their equipment seized (Nakyagaba et al., 2021). The gulper technology had been circulated to operators affiliated to an international NGO, Water for People, and without the knowledge of KCCA, which oversees city sanitation through its Directorate of Public Health and Environment. Their arrest led to engagement between Water for People and KCCA to improve the city authority’s understanding of the technology’s potential benefits.

Subsequently, when KCCA formed the Kampala Water and Sanitation Forum in 2016 to streamline and raise support for sanitation operations in the city, Water for People was one of the participating partner organisations. Other members included the National Water and Sewerage Corporation, MTN Uganda (a telecom company that provided funding) and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ). The forum led to the establishment of a set of “minimum standards for onsite sanitation technology options” (KCCA, 2016), and to the adoption of gulper technology as a pilot. Starting in 2016, gulper operators were able to associate and given licences to operate in the city.

When the gulper was introduced in Kampala by Water for People, the CSO trained youths to operate it. Upon partnership with KCCA when the governing body accepted the technology on a business-model pilot project, youths trained by Water for People became entrepreneurs, pioneering the gulper technology in various places across the city (Nkurunziza, 2017). The business model was a private–public partnership aimed at increasing sanitation service levels across the city by (mostly small) private businesses with support from KCCA.

To operationalise the model, KCCA assigned the entrepreneurs to each of the five divisions of the city, although each entrepreneur was not restricted to that particular division. This was rather to ensure that every city division had an entrepreneur operating the gulper technology. Each entrepreneur was required to have business premises in their assigned division. For instance, in Kawempe division, Terikigana Co Ltd was located on Tula Road, while Forever Sanitation was located on Hoima road and Sir Apollo on Kagwa Road. Start-up capital was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through KCCA, and Water for People provided start-up kits on a loan basis, including protective equipment, barrels and the gulper pump. Once the faecal sludge is collected, it is transported to and discharged in the Lubigi sewage treatment facility, one of the city’s treatment plants operated by the National Water and Sewage Corporation. Another CSO, CIDI, introduced transfer tanks remodelled from old KCCA cesspool trucks to increase the capacity that entrepreneurs can transport to the sewage treatment plant at once. Although this was briefly helpful, entrepreneurs soon began to distance themselves from the transfer trucks over high costs, resorting instead to hiring their own trucks from individual (private) transport operators in the city.

KCCA set up a general sanitation call centre which would, among other functions, monitor the gulper pilot operations and respond to public enquiries – for example, citizens seeking licensed service providers or providing feedback on gulper sanitation services. Overall, the call centre found urban residents receptive to the technology. Some callers directly requested gulper services, while others became aware of it when calling to make general inquiries. Further research within informal settlements communities where the technology was in use also found a positive reception of the technology – although in interviews, community members refrained from identifying who the operators were, for fear that these services were still illegal (Nakyagaba et al., 2021) (see also the Understanding Limitations section, below). In other communities, KCCA utilised local leaders and local government structures, such as local councils and village health teams, to spread awareness about using gulper as an alternative pit-emptying technology in hard-to-reach areas and for clients having thick sludge.

Notwithstanding the “minimum standards” mentioned above, actions to promote gulper technology remain in contrast with KCCA’s directorate of physical planning and the Ugandan Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development regulations. However, in the urban neighbourhoods where it has been used, there is consensus that the technology has improved service delivery and health in general. Since gulper’s official inception in 2016, faecal sludge collection and transportation has improved from below 400m3 daily (KCCA, 2017b) to 911m3 (KCCA, 2020: 2) in retrospective comparison to conditions experienced prior to the introduction of gulper pumps.

World Bank Citywide Inclusive Sanitation initiative. Kampala is one of the participating cities in the World Bank’s Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) initiative. Since late 2018, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided USD 4.3 million to KCCA, with one of the ambitions to “increase the volume of faecal sludge that is safely managed to 80%, and the volume safely managed in informal settlements to 60% by facilitating access to improved onsite sanitation services, primarily targeting the poor and underserved”. Latter stages of the gulper pilot described in this case study were funded through this citywide sanitation project, which is planned to run from 2018 to 2024.

Target population, communities, constituents or "beneficiaries"

Low-income residents of Kampala’s informal settlements benefit from a cleaner environment and more hygienic toilets, which could otherwise be locked down by KCCA for not meeting minimum sanitary standards. Vendors and users of informal markets such as Ggaba market also benefited from cleaner public toilets and cheaper service providers. Ggaba is a risky environment because it is located on the shore of Lake Victoria and poses serious contamination risks to the lake – for example, in 2015 when typhoid broke out in Kampala, Ggaba food vending was temporarily halted by health governing bodies until the toilet standards, including emptying, were met.

While people still pay for gulper services, the KCCA also holds campaigns (KCCA, 2021; KCCA, 2017a), during which time households in selected informal settlements can access subsidised gulper or cesspit emptying services.