David Mahlobo participating in World Toilet Summit

Water and Sanitation Deputy Minister, David Mahlobo, is currently participating in the World Toilet Summit, underway in Abuja, Nigeria.

The summit brings together policymakers, non-profit organisations, academics, and other sector leaders to address the sanitation crisis that is affecting a large majority of people in the world.

The summit aims to, among other things, improve collaboration among stakeholders around driving accelerated access to sustainable sanitation services, mobilise investment to the sanitation sub-sector, and create an enabling environment for sanitation service delivery through private sector participation.

The two-day summit, which will take place from 18 - 19 November 2022, is hosted by the Organised Private Sector in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (OPS-WASH) in collaboration with the World Toilet Organisation and the Federal Ministry of Water Resources in Nigeria.

Held under the theme “Sanitation Innovations for Economic Development”, the summit also seeks to provide a platform to share, learn and interact with diverse stakeholders on different sanitation subthemes, and to afford an opportunity to exhibit sanitation products and services.

The Department of Water and Sanitation said the summit is a unique global platform in which stakeholders come together and devise means to address sanitation challenges and find solutions.

“This summit is a token of continuing efforts towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) which states that by 2030, countries must have achieved access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and primarily end open defaecation,” it said.

Solutions to sanitation challenges

Meanwhile, speaking at a World Toilet Day Dialogue in Mulderdrift, Johannesburg, on Friday, the department’s Deputy Director-General for Water Services, Risimati Mathye, emphasised the need for partnerships with the private sector to come up with solutions to sanitation challenges.

“The message that the provision of alternative sanitation is a big mandate of the department and that through partnerships with various other sector partners we can achieve the goal of 2030,” Mathye said.

During the dialogue, stakeholders discussed how to rethink the sanitation service delivery in the building and construction industry.

(With Inputs from South African Government Press Release)