David Kuria: Sanitation and Toilet Entrepreneur

Welcome to Circle of Blue Radio’s Series 5 in 15, where we’re asking global thought leaders 5 questions in 15 minutes, more or less. These are experts working in journalism, science, communication design, and water. I’m J. Carl Ganter. Today’s program is underwritten by Traverse Internet Law, tech savvy lawyers, representing internet and technology companies.

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In the sub-Saharan region, 80 percent of recorded illnesses are water-born diseases, and more than two-thirds of these people don’t have access to basic sanitation. While access to safe drinking water is gaining importance in the political arena, it’s still hard to talk about restrooms and toilets, but today I’m speaking with a man who really does know toilets. David Kuria is founder of EcoTact. It’s an organization based in Nairobi that’s really transforming sanitation systems in Kenya and the greater sub-Saharan region. EcoTact’s campaign breaks down the stereotypes about sanitation. It’s also created a sustainable model for the Ikotoilet, a community hub of stores and services all built around a public toilet.

David, tell me about how water-born diseases and basic sanitation are related, and what kinds of transformations need to be made in health and sanitation?

…the first thing you see, beautiful thing, is a toilet. When you come to the city of Nairobi, you’ll be shocked. And the next thing you’ll be asking is what is this? It’s a public toilet. We are putting toilet monuments just to try and bring back the importance to our people of public convenience and public toilets.

We are trying to look at social transformation, economic transformation, and to some extent political transformation as far as sanitation is concerned. I think this is quite a distinct situation from the West, because from the word go, when we are talking about sanitation, back home we don’t talk about it. It’s a less topical subject that, at homes, we don’t talk about toilets at homes, we don’t talk about toilets at school, and even at the political level. When you look at the close spectrum, we are moving ahead very well in addressing the water situation, but nobody wants to be associated with sanitation. It’s a taboo in African culture. To us, what we are trying to say is, “How do we break these cultural barriers, economic barriers and political barriers to be able to accelerate sanitation access to our people?” Again, more than half of the people across the region have no sanitation. They’re either using open defecation, even in cities, or what we are calling in Nairobi, The Flying Toilet, just using the polythene bags and throwing them away. It’s really the key concern of lack of access, but also the behavior transformation that’s associated with improving dignity, improving public health of our people.

Sanitation is not something that’s openly discussed in sub-Saharan culture or really anywhere, so how are you working to get beyond the social taboo that restrooms and toilets have in the region and really anywhere?

What we are doing in my company is an initiative we launched two years ago called the Ikotoilet, which is derived from ecological systems. Now the idea of Ikotoilet again goes beyond the toilet. How do you break those cultural barriers of sanitation or toilets that we cannot talk about? We have gone beyond that, what we are calling thinking beyond the toilet, by putting up one aspect of sustainability, and that’s what we are calling the toilet mall, where you can go to the toilet for more than the pee and poo function, you can have your shoe polished, you can transfer money ATM, we have a system in the toilet, you can buy your soft drink, there’s a fresh cold drink, and trying to lead a transformation in the social thinking associated with a toilet. That is critical. Now the other aspect is how do you transform our behavior aspect of this?

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