Mozambique
Context
Mozambique is a fertile country in south east Africa, still recovering from civil war. The legacy of war and the country's vulnerability to floods, droughts and earthquakes create serious setbacks to development.
Extreme poverty remains widespread, with low life expectancy and a high child mortality rate. The government estimates that over half of the population do not have safe water to drink. Diarrhoea causes around 10% of deaths of children under the age of five.
Only 17% of households in Mozambique have access to a clean, safe toilet.
WaterAid's programme:
WaterAid began working in Mozambique in 1995. Our work has particularly focused on collaborating with government departments to implement the national water policy in a way that ensures the poorest people benefit from affordable and long lasting projects.
What has WaterAid achieved?
- WaterAid has helped more than 270,000 people gain access to water in Mozambique.
WaterAid introduced the rope pump to poor rural areas, providing a cheap alternative to water supply that is easy to maintain.
- WaterAid-promoted composting latrines, which mix human waste with soil and ash to make compost for agriculture, are helping to improve both sanitation and crop yields in Mozambique.
- 100% of households in Urbanizção, a barrio (unplanned city neighbourhood) within the capital city Maputo, now have access to clean and safe sanitation.
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Credit: WaterAid /
Thérèse Mahon |
Case study
Omar Salima, a farmer, in fields that he has fertilised with compost from his village's latrine.
In the past we had to buy artificial fertiliser and we could only afford to open a small field – just 3 hectares. Now we are able to farm 13 hectares.
Price points:
£7 could pay for a bag of cement to produce a latrine slab £200 could buy a locally built rope pump £750 could pay for a community association to provide a village with hygiene promotion, latrine construction training and water point management £2,500 could provide a village with a hand dug well and a handpump, giving them access to clean, safe water
Films/ technology/other links:
Celebrating sanitation
Rope pumps: a simpler solution
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Mozambique World Bank (2011) World Development Indicators database - databank.worldbank.org, WHO / UNICEF (2010) Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report 2010, UNDP (2011), Human Development Report 2011 NB. Official statistics tend to understate the extent of water and sanitation problems, sometimes by a large factor.
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What we do
13,000
