Reconsidering shared sanitation facilities in sub-Saharan African cities: the example of Freetown, Sierra Leone

Innovative sanitation programmes such as Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) or sanitation marketing concentrate on the development of individual sanitation. However such provisions are not always feasible in urban settlements due to economical and physical constraints. Urban dwellers are facing a limited range of sanitation options. Amongst them, shared facilities are often the only alternative to open defecation, however the implementers do not always consider all of the shared sanitation options available to them and their appropriateness from the user perspective. Based on examples from Freetown, this paper calls for a reconsideration of shared sanitation facilities by donors, urban planners and researchers. This reconsideration should take into account the acceptability and value of different sanitation facilities to the users through participatory methods, that acknowledge the range of shared options available to urban dwellers.