by André
On the last week of July I attended the 38th WEDC International Conference WEDC. The conference took place at Loughborough University (UK) and had the theme Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Services Beyond 2015: Improving access and sustainability.
The WEDC International Conference is a highly respected, global platform for practitioners, decision makers, academics and researchers who lead water and sanitation innovation in developing countries. Click here to view some photos of the 2014 conference.
Conceived in the early 1970s, the Conference is held regularly in either Africa or Asia and is the only conference of its type to be co-organized and hosted in a developing country. Our previous 36 conferences have been attended by over 8500 participants from 80 countries; our conference collection of over 2400 papers is a unique resource for the sector.
I gave a presentation together with Lena about her work on Emptying practises of onsite systems in Maputo. Lena’s work is very relevant for the contact of water reuse in the city of Maputo considering that more than 90% of the city’s inhabitants are not covered by the existing sewer network but rely on onsite systems, typically latrines. We got very good feedback on the presentation and the Q&A was very lively. It was my first time at WEDC and I really enjoyed it; networking is surely a highlight with many practitioners, policy makers and researchers attending the conference. In this sense I would highlight a very good meeting I had with the people of WSUP.
About Lena’s work, we are planning to finalize the report until the end of August, but I can already say that some of the conclusions are really interesting, and believe that the work we did can play a role in increasing the amount of safely managed faecal sludge in Maputo. This is also related with a new project in which I have been work with Johanna and that we will make public in the next few days.
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