Have Five Decades of Development Engineering Research Improved Sanitation in Southern Africa?

Abstract

In developed countries, public health engineering has been closely associated with extensions of life expectancy and declines in infant mortality well beyond the contributions of medicine. However, different approaches have had to be taken in poorer countries. This paper uses cases from South and Southern Africa to illustrate the challenges and the responses and to consider whether these reflect a formal 'development engineering' approach. While external agencies have actively promoted a variety of approaches, engineered interventions were most successful where they took account of social, economic and environmental contexts, reflected local preferences and were developed by, or in close coordination with, the operational institutions concerned.

“Sanitation” in the Top Development Journals: A Review

“…For example, panel data show that foreign aid has contributed substantially to improving the water supply and sanitation among recipient countries (Gopalan and Rajan 2016;Ndikumana and Pickbourn 2017). The implementation of development engineering interventions to address health and environmental concerns has also generated positive impacts in advancing sanitation in South and southern Africa (Muller 2020). Decentralization of sanitation programs is also a popular approach used to improve sanitation delivery in urban areas.…”

Advancing the Use of Fecal Sludge for Timelier and Better-Quality Epidemiological Data in Low- and Middle-Income Countries for Pandemic Prevention

“…The importance of research partnerships is not new, 5 but possibly more complex in the Southern African sanitation field with five decades of human waste research. 6 With no formal global network, international nonprofit institutions can fill this role by bringing together academic research partners and public health officials for interdisciplinary and collaborative research and increased awareness of NSSS. Such partnerships can enable these settings to innovatively adapt academic or healthcare laboratory operations while maintaining high-quality data and also promote peer-reviewed literature originating from resource-limited laboratory settings.…”

“…Research partnerships are required to progress from individual clinical patient samples (which has been happening at a limited scale in healthcare settings) to pooled community samples in terms of fecal sludge. The importance of research partnerships is not new, but possibly more complex in the Southern African sanitation field with five decades of human waste research . With no formal global network, international nonprofit institutions can fill this role by bringing together academic research partners and public health officials for interdisciplinary and collaborative research and increased awareness of NSSS.…”