Building just sanitation across urban Africa

Building just sanitation from a feminist perspective is an integral component of building social and environmental justice. Since 2020, our President has been working on an action-research project called OVERDUE: Tackling the sanitation taboo across urban Africa.

Despite the commitment expressed by African leaders through the 2015 Ngor Declaration, to achieve universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation and hygiene services, and eliminate open defecation by 2030 – later endorsed by the international community as part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – the sanitation ‘crisis’ is far from vanishing in African cities, particularly prejudicing women and girls, as users, care givers and sanitation providers.

This initiative seeks to build empirical, conceptual and methodological knowledge to strengthen just sanitation pathways in African cities and to support gender inclusive and sustainable urbanization and planning across urban Africa.

Here is a short video explaining how the project works:

If you want to join this initiative please get in touch with our President at: hic.president@hic-net.org / a.allen@ucl.ac.uk