Training on Preparation of Excreta Flow Diagram

Where does all the poop go?

Helping Develop Excreta Flow Diagrams for South Africa 

August 6-7, 2018

Venue: Moses Mabhida Stadium

Training on Preparation of Excreta Flow Diagram 

In 2012, an estimated 842,000 deaths in middle-and low-income countries were caused by contaminated drinkingwater, inadequate handwashing facilities, and inappropriate or inadequate sanitation services (WWAP, 2017). Considering this, regarding management of sanitation services, Excreta / Shit-Flow Diagram (SFD), provided by the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) was found to be a preferred tool https://sfd.susana.org to address sanitation management. SFD is an easy visualised representation of excreta flows and serves as advocacy tool to ensure human excreta is managed safely through the sanitation supply chain. The benefit of the tool is that it offers an innovative way to engage relevant stakeholders including political leaders, sanitation experts, civil society organizations in a co-ordinated dialogue about excreta management. Therefore, it can be used by technical and nontechnical stakeholders and can subsequently be used to support decision-making regarding sanitation planning and programming. 

The Water Research Commission has appointed Emanti to develop SFDs for selected sanitation systems in South Africa. This project aims to provide guidance to decision makers on improving faecal sludge management (FSM) using a tool that takes into account all the components of the sanitation value chain. The proposed study aims to apply the SFD tool and its standardised methodology in up to 30 municipalities, and supporting the establishment of regional capacity within South Africa to prepare high quality SFDs. This project therefore provides an opportunity to further understand the sanitation situation at a number of municipalities throughout South Africa, and simultaneously develop a national overview of the situation within South Africa. This will allow appropriate strategies to be developed to close any gap within sanitation, wastewater effluent and faecal sludge management in South Africa. Target groups were invited to attend a training which aims to introduce the project and assist with SFD development requirements and process in order to manage faecal sludge. 

The target audience included: 

• Municipal officials responsible for the management of sanitation services (e.g. planning, operations andmaintenance)
• DWS officials responsible for sanitation, regulation and enforcement,
• Researchers and engineers involved in the sanitation management,
• Companies responsible for operation and maintenance of sanitation services (e.g. emptying, transportation, sludge reuse)