User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Senegal

Public toilets in Senegal

Public toilets
A French speaking country, the local words for toilets include toilettes and WC, while the local word for toilet paper is Papier toilette, the word for men's toilet is hommes and the word for women's toilet is femmes.

Dakar is prone to flooding. Private aid groups like SpeakUpAfrica have tried to address sanitation infrastructure problems by constructing public toilets with onsite composting. This has an added benefit to locals because it provides a source of renewable energy.

Across the whole of the country, 52% the country had sanitation coverage. In contrast, only 14% of the country had public or community toilet coverage.

Rotary District 9101 District Governor Sunny Akoupha set a goal in March 2022 of building over 1,000 new public toilets between then and 2027. District 1190, which includes parts of Cumbria, Lancashire, Brampton and Longtown, offered to assist the Mali based project. The first twelve toilets scheduled to be constructed were to be built in Bamako. Others were planned for other cities in Mali, and in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Senegal
Around 2.5 billion people around the world in 2018 did not have access to adequate toilet facilities. Around 4.5 billion people lacked access to proper sanitation. Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level.

German notions of cultural codes around the usage of public toilets has been exported to many parts of the world as a result of German colonialism, but many places in Africa and the Pacific continue to challenge those norms around cleanliness well into the 2010s. Local resistance to toilet cleanliness justified further German repression on the part of the local population during their colonial period.

Public toilets, depending on their design, can be tools of social exclusion. The lack of single-sex women's toilets in developing countries makes it harder for women to participate in public life, in education and in the workplace. Across Africa, open defecation had social consequences. These included loss of dignity and privacy. It also put women at risk of sexual violence.

An issue in developing countries is toilet access in schools. Only 46% of schools in developing countries have them. Many schools around the world in 2018 did not have toilets, with the problem particularly acute in parts of Africa and Asia. Only one in five primary schools on earth had a toilet and only one in eight secondary schools had public toilets. In developing countries, girls are less likely to attend school once they hit puberty if their school does not have adequate hygiene facilities. 344 million children in sub-Saharan Africa did not have a toilet in their home in 2018. The lack of toilet access put these children at risk of water borne diseases.

There are generally two toilet styles in public bathrooms in Africa. One is a traditional squat toilet. The other is a western style toilet with bowl and a place to sit. Flush toilets are often only found in affluent areas of developing countries.