User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in Tanzania

Public toilets in Tanzania are few in number, with only around two per 100,000 people. While squat toilets are the most common style, a mix of pit latrine and western style sit toilets are used inside public toilet facilities. Public toilets are often located at hotels, campsites and near national parks. The lack of public toilets impedes tourism growth in some places.

Public toilets
choo is Swahili for toilet. There are only a few public toilets in Tanzania. A 2021 study found there were two public toilets per 100,000 people. The quality of public toilets is very low, with most being dirty or poorly maintained.

Most public toilets in Tanzania are pit latrines and squat toilets. They do not have water and they do not provide toilet paper. The most common location for public toilets is hotels, which may have a mix of Western-style sit toilets and squat toilets. Sometimes, squat toilets are located inside showers at some hotels. People tend to prefer using water over toilet paper to clean their themselves after urinating or defecating. Culturally, people tend to use their left hand for this activity as it keeps the right hand, used to eat with, clean.

The lack of toilets in Unguja and Pemba impeded growth of the international tourist market. There were very few public toilets in Unguja and Pemba, with the existing ones not meeting the needs of the local population and being in poor condition. Public toilets in Chake Chake were in Tibirinzi, at the bus stand and in the port area in 2021. There were 12 public toilets at the Wete Market in 2021.

Campsites at national parks often have very basic toilet blocks, with the facilities consisting of a row of pit toilets, a tap for water and in a few, showers. The Shire Plateau trail to Mount Kilimanjaro has only one public toilet, and it is is an outhouse squat toilet.

History
In the 2010s, landowners in Dar es Salaam  who were given loans by a Tanzanian federation to build toilets on their property had to sign an agreement that after building toilets for tenants, they would not raise tenant rent for three years. Most of the public toilets in Dar es Salaam in 2020 were dirty, did not have equipment for the disposal of waste, did not provide personal cleaning supplies like soap or toilet paper, and lacked clean water.

Sanitation and open defecation
In the early 2010s, a large percentage of the population of Dar es Salaam lacked adequate sanitation.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in Tanzania
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.

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. 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.

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.

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.