Africa in Perspective (Part 2): Distributed Infrastructure in Informal Settlements
How to leverage community benefits?
Reflecting that globally more than one billion people live in informal settlements, new innovations for housing and infrastructure are in urgent need.
In the first article, the focus was placed on emerging technologies for energy generation and distribution and how they can promote community engagement in informal settlements.
In this second article, we will have a look at technological innovations that address the housing challenges and discuss the question of why distributed infrastructure would be more beneficial to the community than traditional infrastructure. We will do this on the example of Accra where close to half of the city’s population live in informal settlements. [1]
Housing improvements
There is nonexistence of durable housing in informal settlements, typically made of waste materials and having dirt floors. In addition, they are usually characterized by lacking connections to basic services such as water and sewer systems and absent of security of tenure. [2] Inadequate governance is the fundamental problem and a non-technological solution with a high impact is to establish regulation and protection of tenants’ rights in informal settlements. Without tenants’ rights, they are not motivated to make even basic investments in rented houses to improve living conditions. Cooperative housing programs, policies that lower housing construction costs, encouraging the participation of the urban poor with small enterprises in low-cost constructions are promising further measures.
Besides protection against extreme weather, adequate housing provides several other benefits including greater satisfaction with one’s quality of life, better mental and physical health, and improved safety and protection against crime.
Designing spaces with prefabricated materials could be a construction improvement to cut costs and guarantee higher quality. Local materials with lower environmental impact should be in focus. Building technologies exist to combine mud as a natural material with other materials to improve performance. Materials also need to be chosen considering what people can afford.
Mapping informal settlements
Energy used for domestic purposes and transport is minimized with increasing population and housing density. Therefore, the high population density bears also promises. A detailed investigation of the area’s characteristics and building layers is setting the groundwork for change. For example, with new mapping technologies settlements can be easily mapped. This will help to find crime spots, most polluted areas, and neighborhoods of extreme density. Solutions can be applied where they have the highest impact.
Distributed infrastructure solutions
You must make a compromise between available technologies and feasible solutions for the specific circumstances in informal settlements. Solutions must be low cost, and in most cases, bringing electricity supply to houses and solutions for sewage disposal is of foremost importance. Among other problems in Accra’s informal settlements, waste and human experiments are a threat to people’s health and block further development.
A promising development could be the nanomembrane toilet. [3] Challenge is that if the electricity grid connection is already too expensive for households, they cannot afford the membrane toilet either. The weak point of the idea is that the membranes have to be changed from time to time and the recurring costs are the first thing to save if money is hard to come by. Missing maintenance will cause operation failure in a long term. The business model is hard to find as the toilet is not producing something to sell. Local business e.g. a maintenance service for the toilet will not be established as people have no monetary outcome from the toilet that can be spent on maintenance.
The option to provide community toilet houses appears more feasible taking local circumstances in Accra’s informal settlements into account. These toilet housings can be spread independently in the area as connecting the houses to a centralized system is not required. There are positive examples that this community toilets bring local service jobs, and the collection of the excrements allows the generation of biogas for cooking. Also, the Chinese government extensively provided community toilets some decades ago in Beijing's old town, and as hygiene improved, the area developed rapidly. [4]
The installment of toilet housings with a connection to sewage lines is a promising example of how distributed infrastructure can improve health and contribute to the functioning of the community.
As waste (in his case human waste) is a valuable resource, a business model can be to use the waste to feed a biogas chamber (biodigester). With the produced biogas, water can be boiled and hot showers can be offered. Biogas from sewage digesters could be used to provide a more sustainable and cleaner option for cooking. This would facilitate the replacement of charcoal stoves with biogas, which will bring environmental and health benefits e.g., by avoiding smoke which is dangerous, especially for small children’s health.
Solutions to leverage community benefits
The overall health and functioning of the community can be addressed with improved housing. The structural sound building could be improved first to make them desirable dwellings for community engagement and then can contribute to an improved urban setting.
Other incentives are needed to establish a sense of community thinking and pro-social behavior. As smartphones are prevalent to a fair extent, even in informal settlements, tokenization can be a way to change behavior.
Blockchain technology-based on open-source protocols combined with the availability of smartphones can be a promising solution.
To make tokenization work by providing rewards, the creation of value goes logically hand in hand. In order to offer value, basic infrastructure is needed.
An example is to incentivize the behavior when somebody brings the garbage to a specific place, as opposed to just throwing it right out of the door. Before the garbage dump can be established and managed to provide jobs, a basic business model that is able to give rewards to people dumping the waste has to be established. This can be recycling materials or separating biomass to produce biogas in biodigesters for further use.
As described before another promising example is the installment of toilet housings to establish a collection point for sewage. Besides being a solution to reduce waste on the streets, it also provides jobs for the people managing the service. With work, people have a new perspective, responsibility, and income which will enable new possibilities. In addition to the benefits for those who find a service job, clients also get an overall higher awareness of hygiene. Clients using the toilet services can change their behavior of dumping waste and start taking care of the environment and community, as they see the benefits.
[1] Accra’s informal settlements are easing the city’s urban housing crisis, (October 7, 2019). Accra’s informal settlements are easing the city’s urban housing crisis (theconversation.com)
[2] State of the world’s cities 2010/2011 — Bringing the urban divide, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) (2010). 11143016_alt.pdf (un.org)
[3] The Nano Membrane Toilet, Treating human waste onsite without external energy or water. The Nano Membrane Toilet : Reinvent the Toilet
[4] Some thoughts about Beijing’s public toilets, (2016) Some Thoughts About Beijing’s Public Toilets | Transplanet (wordpress.com)
[5] EU-Africa cooperation in research and innovation, High Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) on Science, Technology and Innovation. EU-Africa cooperation in research and innovation | European Commission (europa.eu)
