5 Sanitation costs analysis in Burkina Faso

Authors: Amah Klutse, Zakari Bouraima and Cyrille Amegnran

The study is conducted in the framework of the WASHCost project in Burkina Faso from data collected in both rural and peri-urban areas. A total of 661households have been surveyed of which 478 households had toilets.

The aim of the current paper is to compare the capital expenditure (CapEx) and the operational and maintenance expenditure (OpEx and CapManEx) for sanitation facilities in rural and peri-urban areas in Burkina Faso. It presents the magnitude of the relative cost of different types of sanitation infrastructures such as the VIP toilet, the Ecosan urine diverting toilet, the pour-flush toilet and the traditional pit latrine.

In rural areas, the average actualised CapEx hardware varies from US$ 54 to US$ 109. The average OpEx varies between US$ 10 and US$ 21 and this expenditure includes the cost of material families used to clean and maintain the toilet and to remove smells. No CapManEx was recorded for most of the pit latrines in the rural areas. However, average annualised CapManEx varied from US$ 0 to US$ 35. A maximum figure of US$ 134 was recorded.

In the peri-urban areas of two small towns (sector 1 in Ouahigouya and sector 2 in Houndé) most existing toilets are pit latrines. Their average updated CapEx hardware is US$ 177 for Ouahigouya sector 1 and US$ 105 for Houndé, sector 2. The average OpEx of the pit latrine is respectively US$ 58 and US$ 29 for sector 1 and sector 2.

The paper gives some figures for a small number of pour-flush toilets and flush toilets with septic tanks. It also gives some data for CapManEx.

In Sector 30 of Ouagadougou, analysis of hardware costs shows no significant difference between the disaggregated annual CapEx hardware of the ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines, ECOSAN and traditional pit latrines over an estimated lifespan of 15 years.

Likewise, for software, the annual CapExSft is almost the same for modern latrines (VIP, pour flush and Ecosan). Average OpEx for VIP and ECOSAN latrines is respectively US$ 32.3 and US$ 35.3).

The pit latrine is not promoted in Burkina Faso, but it is the toilet used by the vast majority of those who have access to one. Section 3 of this paper shows that currently two thirds of the rural population has ‘no service’ in terms of accessibility and use of toilets, three quarters has no service in terms of reliability of their toilet (which requires maintenance and some money spent on keeping it clean and smell free) while only 5% of the population has access to a toilet that offers some kind of environmental protection by safe disposal of the sludge.

Service levels in rural and peri-urban areas are very reliant on household self-supply and expenditure both to acquire them and to keep them functional. All kinds of toilet have operating costs and all have need for rehabilitation. The Government has a big task to meet the Millennium Development target for sanitation – it will require another 6.5 million people to gain access by 2015. A full understanding of the costs and service levels of alternatives is an important building block in the effort to improve sanitation coverage in a country with some of the lowest levels of toilet access and use in the world.