BORDA Zambia facilitates a cross-border Three Cities Knowledge Exchange programme

Sanitation is one of the biggest challenges faced by many African countries. Although contexts vary, these challenges are similar in nature. That is why key players need to reach across national borders to find common ground for sharing their sanitation knowledge and experiences.

Inter-City Knowledge Exchange for Onsite Sanitation

As part of its capacity building and knowledge transfer programme, BORDA Zambia facilitated a Three Cities Knowledge Exchange (KEx) programme for onsite sanitation (OSS) and faecal sludge management (FSM) in the cities of Lusaka (Zambia), Kampala (Uganda) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). This initiative spanned six months (September 2018 – March 2019) and was funded by GIZ under its Climate Friendly Sanitation Project for Lusaka, Zambia.

This capacity building initiative brought together key players from local authorities, regulatory bodies and service providers to enable the key players in the field of OSS and FSM to make more informed decisions through collaboration and coordination between the three cities. Through learning about the existing OSS and FSM approaches and frameworks in Lusaka, Kampala and Dar es Salaam, participants gained a broad understanding of the challenges and opportunities relating to the implementation and operation of successful FSM systems along the complete OSS service chain.

Post-Exchange Dissemination

An essential part of the KEx programme included post-KEx dissemination workshops for the Zambian representatives from Lusaka Water & Sanitation Company Limited, the Lusaka City Council, the National Water Supply and Sanitation Council (NWASCO) and the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA). These workshops compared the Kampala and Dar es Salaam solutions to the status quo in Lusaka and included an evaluation of lessons learnt during the exchange visits.

Participants in the Lusaka post-KEx dissemination workshops described the whole programme as an eye opener in dealing with sanitation challenges. Participants also emphasised that collaboration through partnerships between key players is imperative to avoid duplication of efforts in dealing with sanitation issues in the city of Lusaka.

So that lessons learnt may be shared more widely, the experiences and outcomes of the Three Cities KEx are being used as the basis for a case study on how sanitation knowledge exchange can be developed and deployed for inter-city knowledge sharing.