Conakry, Guinea: The Government of Guinea and the Lives and Livelihoods Fund have provided 56 sanitation trucks to the National Agency for Public Hygiene and Sanitation (ANASP) under the Ministry of Hydraulics and Sanitation to address challenges linked to urgent solid waste disposal in the poorest parts of the city.
The trucks will confront the challenges posed by Conakry’s rapid urban growth, the environmental impact of which is the worsening of living conditions of the population.
Guinea has experienced rapid urban population growth, with the number of people living in urban areas rising from 16.6% in 1971 to 36.9% in 2020.
Within 10 years, it is estimated that more than half of the Guinea population will live urbanised.
However, a reported 80% of rural households, and some 54% of those in the urban areas, dispose of their waste in the open, and it is estimated that less than 6,7 % of households in Guinea practice safe waste disposal. The impact of the situation contributes to both environmental problems, such as flooding, and health risks, such as contamination of open water sources.
As a result, the government, through the “National Plan for Economic and Social Development”, has identified access to quality social services such as hygiene, sanitation and drinking water as a top priority.
“Populations living in a healthy environment and who are themselves healthy are citizens capable of investing themselves fully and with all their might in the process of resilience to shocks and socio-economic development underway in Guinea as part of the emergence hoped for in 2040,” said His Excellency Professor Alpha Condé, Head of State, President of the Republic in a statement.
The sanitation trucks were made available with US$54 million allocated to the Conakry Sanitation Project funded by the Lives and Livelihoods Fund, a multilateral development initiative created by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and development cooperation partners.
According to UN-Habitat, lack of sanitation has led to more than 1,200 daily deaths of children under five worldwide, more than the number of deaths caused by AIDS, measles and tuberculosis combined. It is for this reason that Professor Alpha CONDE, Head of State, President of the Republic constantly urges the Guinean population to adopt appropriate hygiene practices and attitudes so that everyone protects themselves and their relatives as well as the environment, in accordance with the strategy of professionalization of the management of solid waste in Conakry.
