Brazzaville workshop gathers stakeholders
On 14 and 15 October, policy-makers, municipal technicians, civil-society leaders and international partners will meet in Brazzaville for the national workshop that will finalise Congo’s 2026-2030 National Sanitation Policy, a document expected to guide investments and regulation in waste management and hygiene for the next five years.
The Ministry of Urban Sanitation, Local Development and Road Maintenance, supported by UNICEF, says the gathering represents the culmination of eighteen months of consultations held in Pointe-Noire, Oyo, Dolisie and several rural districts, aimed at capturing views from administrators, engineers, market women and youth groups.
“We must leave Brazzaville with a consensual text and a realistic roadmap,” a senior official involved in the drafting process told reporters, emphasising that the policy will be forwarded to the Council of Ministers for approval before being translated into operational programmes and regional bylaws.
Policy rooted in global and continental agendas
The draft aligns explicitly with Sustainable Development Goal 6, which calls for universal access to water and sanitation by 2030, and reflects commitments made by Congo at the African Union’s Agenda 2063 as well as at the 9th World Water Forum held last year in Dakar.
Unicef’s acting representative in Brazzaville, quoted in a preparatory note, argues that consistent policy backed by predictable financing can cut open defecation, now estimated at 18 percent nationwide, “in half within five years if local authorities and communities remain fully engaged”.
Rapid urbanisation raises stakes
Congo’s urban population has doubled since 2000, according to national statistics, and three quarters of city dwellers live in informal neighbourhoods without organised sewerage or regular waste collection, circumstances that have contributed to periodic cholera alerts and seasonal flooding along the Tsiémé and Loango rivers.
In Brazzaville’s Makelekele district, residents recount how clogged drains transformed regular rains into knee-deep torrents last March; municipal workers needed two days to clear plastic, soil and household debris, a scene echoed in Pointe-Noire’s Tié-Tié ward during the same period.
Public health officers warn that stagnant pools are breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, while environmental scientists from Marien-Ngouabi University link uncollected garbage to the accelerated erosion that has already swallowed parts of the Kinsoundi hillside.
Measures proposed in the draft
The proposed policy introduces service standards for faecal sludge management, obliging municipalities above 50,000 inhabitants to establish designated treatment sites and subsidised emptying fees, a practice successfully piloted in Ouesso with support from the African Development Bank, according to the draft’s technical annex.
It also foresees a national information platform that will map latrine coverage, drainage networks and waste-collection routes in real time, harnessing geospatial data produced by the National Centre for Cartography and remote sensors operated by the regional climate observatory in Pointe-Noire.
For financing, the document proposes a dedicated sanitation levy indexed to water bills, expected to raise the equivalent of six million dollars annually, while maintaining space for public-private partnerships to modernise landfill sites such as Vindoulou outside Pointe-Noire.
Grassroots engagement for lasting impact
Beyond infrastructure, the draft policy places social mobilisation at its core, earmarking up to 10 percent of the annual sanitation budget for communication campaigns that blend local languages, radio jingles and school clubs to promote hand-washing, proper toilet use and waste segregation.
Experiences from the Community-Led Total Sanitation programme piloted in northern Cuvette have inspired parts of the strategy; facilitators report that triggering exercises there cut open defecation in Loukolela district from 53 to 27 percent within two years, largely through peer pressure and local recognition ceremonies.
Traditional leaders from the Mayombe forest zone are expected in Brazzaville to advocate for culturally adapted latrine designs, noting that earlier concrete models proved unsuitable for high-water-table villages; their participation signals what organisers call “a bottom-up approach unprecedented in Congo’s sanitation history”.
From validation to implementation
During the workshop, working groups will refine performance indicators, including targets for household latrines, school hand-washing stations and urban drainage kilometers rehabilitated, before compiling an implementation matrix that assigns responsibilities to ministries, departments and commune councils.
Once validated, the policy will pass through legal review at the Ministry of Justice, then tabled for adoption by the Council of Ministers, a sequence observers expect to conclude before the end of the year, allowing the 2026-2030 action plan to be integrated into the 2025 national budget outline.
International partners appear ready to engage; the World Bank’s Water Global Practice signalled interest in co-financing peri-urban sanitation corridors, while the European Union delegation in Brazzaville has earmarked technical assistance for solid-waste governance reforms that dovetail with the coming policy.
If the timeline holds, households from Bacongo to Makoua could start seeing upgraded drainage and safer latrines by early 2026, advances that environmental advocacy group Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Eau describes as “a potential game changer for public health and climate resilience across the Republic”.