Global Waters Radio: Emmanuel Odotei on WASH Innovations in Ghana
“We are now targeting the poorest of the poor and the marginalized in households and communities that we work in, so that people who can’t afford to construct latrines will now have the wherewithal to do construction of their own latrines in their homes.”
Emmanuel Odotei is a veteran water, sanitation, and hygiene specialist with more than 30 years of experience in the sector. The WASH Project Management Specialist for USAID/Ghana, Odotei served as Activity Manager for the recently concluded Water Access Sanitation and Hygiene for the Urban Poor (WASH-UP) project, a 7-year initiative that used market-based approaches to improve WASH services and infrastructure in Ghana’s urban slums. Today, Odotei is helping oversee the WASH for Health project, a 5-year initiative concluding in 2020 that aims to improve water supply and sanitation access in 30 districts in rural Ghana through infrastructure improvements and behavior change campaigns in the community and the classroom.
In his recent conversation with Global Waters Radio, Odotei talks about Ghana’s ongoing efforts to improve water supply and sanitation in pursuit of Target 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which aims to provide universal access to water and sanitation by 2030. He says the WASH for Health project is currently deploying a number of innovative WASH solutions to help increase water supply and sanitation coverage, including manual borehole drilling, plastic slab latrines that have reduced construction costs, and Biofil latrines that use worms to help treat human waste.
“When the Biofil latrine is constructed, it can go for 10 to 15 years without evacuation.”
Despite the considerable work that remains for Ghana to reach its SDG sanitation target in particular, Odotei is confident. He says that government investment in the sanitation sector, coupled with leveraging private sector expertise and resources, should allow Ghana to make substantial progress in the years ahead — with the public and private sectors working hand in hand, he tells Global Waters Radio, “in the next 10 years Ghana should be able to even exceed our target for Sustainable Development Goals on sanitation.” To listen to the full podcast, please click below.
To view or download this Global Waters Radio transcript, please click here.
By Russell Sticklor
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Global Waters Radio is a podcast series produced by the Water Team at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The series offers listeners insights from USAID officials, development partners, thought leaders and experts from across the water sector as they discuss current USAID water programming and cutting-edge research from around the world. Have a topic you would like to see covered in a future Global Waters Radio podcast? Please contact us at waterteam@usaid.gov, and follow us on Twitter @USAIDWater.
