The Namibian government has continued to work with communities to improve sanitation coverage in some of the country’s poorest regions, three years after a CCIJ investigation laid bare the country’s sanitation crises and recommended that toilet-building schemes be accompanied by community awareness, outreach and inclusion.

In rural areas of the Kapako Constituency, Prime Minister Elijah Ngurare announced that a total of 156 community toilets have been constructed, as part of a “collaborative sanitation initiative aimed at improving public health and eliminating open defecation.”

Roughly 95 people from eight constituencies of the Kavango West Region “played a central role in the project by producing their own bricks,” Ngurare said, adding that the project cost approximately N$3 million ($183,000).

Both residents and sanitation experts have welcomed the project in Namibia’s poorest region, which has the worst sanitation coverage in the entire country. Matheus Shuuya, water, sanitation, and hygiene specialist at UNICEF Namibia, praised the latest construction drive in Kapako.

“UNICEF commends the Government of Namibia on their efforts to address the sanitation situation in Namibia,” he told CCIJ in an email, adding that UNICEF will “continue to collaborate with the Government of Namibia to deliver sustainable sanitation at scale.”

However, major challenges remain around meaningful improvements to both water and sanitation across the nation, as underfunding and rapid urbanization leaves many communities in both rural and urban areas still relying on open defecation.

For many Namibians, open defecation is the only option they’ve ever known, but CCIJ’s investigation exposed the shocking conditions citizens face, risking robbery, sexual assault and even wildlife attacks, as they are forced to seek the privacy of the bush. In addition to safety and dignity concerns, these conditions can lead to the spread of deadly fecal-oral diseases, such as cholera and Hepatitis E, as well as the contamination of key water sources used for drinking and cooking.

The CCIJ’s expose further revealed that a crisis of this magnitude was avoidable. Namibia’s own 2008 Water Supply and Sanitation Policy and its 2010-2015 National Sanitation and Hygiene Strategy both outlined that training on cleaning, construction, maintenance and usage, as well as raising awareness of the benefits of sanitation, would be vital when installing toilets in a community.

CCIJ found that such practices were never previously implemented. Despite the government spending tens of millions of dollars on over 20,000 toilets in the past 15 years, open defecation levels dropped by just 2.7% nationwide and sanitation levels in urban areas actually declined, with many residents returning to the bush once their toilets became unclean or damaged.