19 Nov 2015   

Celebrating UN World Toilet Day with speaker confirmation from UNICEF

Today’s UN World Toilet Day highlights the largest international development challenges – ending the global water, sanitation and hygiene crisis. While access to improved drinking water sources has been mostly on track and 91% of the global population now have drinking water, access to sanitation is the most lacking target of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme report (2015), 2.4 billion people or 68% of the world’s population live without adequate sanitation and 946 million people who defecate in the open.

Sanitation provision has not kept pace with increases in population, which is especially evident in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people without access to sanitation has increased since 1990. 61% of continent population still do not have access to improved sanitation and 21% defecate in the open. Considering the forecast of Africa’s urban population to double by 2030, these issues require immediate actions to be put in place.

The AIDF would like to mark World Toilet Day with the announcement of a new speaker - Dr. Samuel Godfrey, Chief Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), UNICEF Ethiopia, who together with Manoj Kumar, Country Director, Ethiopia, Plan International and representative of Kaercher FUTURETECH will tackle issues in panel on WASH innovations and good practice at the upcoming Aid & Development Africa Summit 2016. They will cover the following topics:

• Ensuring access to safe drinking water and sanitation
• Discussing water quality and safety
• Examining solutions for water treatment
• Household and portable sanitation solutions and services
• Wastewater management in rural areas and resource recovery
• Best practice for improving hygiene awareness and education

Find out more about the Summit and speakers at Africa.aidforum.org

Providing adequate drinking water supplies and disease-preventing sanitation facilities remain major challenges. Therefore improved technologies, better research as well as closer collaboration and partnership between various levels of government, aid agencies, UN, investors and private sector are critical. AIDF’s objective is to help bring all actors together in one room to address the challenges on sanitation provision and water security.

Wishing you a happy World Toilet Day!