Bucketing City Failure:
Slum Dwellers Attempt Kampala’s Sewage Problem
Written by: Jacinta Kannyange
Saturday, October 18, 2025
In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, a silent crisis festers beneath the feet of its nearly 4.5 million inhabitants: the city’s fragile and inadequate sewage system
In the informal settlements of Kamwokya, as children chase each other in a game of tag, their laughter cutting through the air, a few feet away, a dark, foul-smelling stream of raw sewage flows from a broken pipe, snaking through the dirt.
Unaware of the danger, the children dart perilously close to the waste, their bare feet skipping over the contaminated ground.
This scene is a daily reality for most slums across the city, where residents face a severe public health crisis caused by raw sewage flowing freely through open drains in residential and business areas.
The persistent problem, often left unresolved for months, is a source of diseases like malaria, skin infections, and stomach illnesses, with children being the most vulnerable.
Stagnant sewage provides breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, while children playing near the effluent are exposed to dangerous pathogens.
Rose Sanyu, a resilient mother of six who has lived in Kamwokya for seven years says her children would play into the open sewer, attracting diseases of hygiene.
“I used to spend a lot of money especially during the school holiday period to treat children as a result of open sewers and even because of the hygiene at home. On top of this, we had to part with smelly pit latrines which needed emptying every month given that they are in a dump terrain,”she shares.
On a bright afternoon, she sits outside her home on a wooden chair, preparing chicken as her children eagerly wait. Just a few meters away, barely noticeable, is her new toilet, not the normal ones one would think about.
“People are always surprised that it does not smell,” she says, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “We use sawdust.”
The kind of toilet is an innovative sanitation approach being introduced in her community by GiveLove Uganda, a non-profit community initiative founded by American environmentalist Lisa Kasy.
The initiative promotes dry compost toilets as a low-cost, eco-friendly solution, especially suited for crowded urban areas where sewer connections are limited or non-existent.
The toilets are designed to collect human waste into a bucket stuffed with saw dust. The saw dust is used to neutralize the smell.
“People still think of human waste as just something dirty. But we’re teaching them that it’s not a waste, it can be turned into something useful,” he explains. “We’re basically starting from scratch in building awareness,” Dickens Bileni, the organization’s project manager.
The composting process begins when full toilet buckets are collected from users. They are then emptied into specially designed compost piles, where the waste is left to decompose over six months. Routine temperature checks ensure the compost is safely processed.
“At the end of the cycle, we get rich, organic manure, which is then sold to farmers,” Bileni says. “It’s a win-win: people get better sanitation, and farmers get affordable, high-quality fertilizer.”
One surprising group of beneficiaries are Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), who often struggle to access traditional public toilets.
“PWDs are our most appreciative clients,” Bileni says. “Our toilets are portable and easy to use. They don’t have to step into flooded, dirty latrines anymore,” he
While innovations like those from GiveLove are transforming lives on the ground, they are yet to reach scale. A handful of compost toilets in slums is a start, but not a solution for a city on the verge of a sanitation breakdown.
Kampala’s sewer system is part of the legacy of the country’s colonial setup. It was constructed between 1920 and 1950 to serve a wealthy minority.
Until now, only 8% of its about 4.5 million population is connected to a functional sewer system, according to the city’s governing body Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). The rest of the city relies on a patchwork of pit latrines (64%), many of them unlined (38%), and septic tanks (29%).
A small but significant percentage, 1% resort to open defecation, often in vulnerable areas like wetlands or poorly lit corners of crowded slums like Kamwokya, where Ms Sanyu and family stay.
The government has made attempts to address the issue. According to the Vote Budget Framework Paper FY2023/24, approximately sh17.4b was allocated toward sanitation and environmental initiatives.
Yet, for many city dwellers, especially those living in informal settlements, the tangible impact remains elusive.
Sanyu recalls that when it rains, a lot of sewage overflows the whole slum, along with stagnant water that leaves them prone to diseases.
During Kampala’s torrential rainy seasons, raw sewage often finds its way into the streets, flooding prime city areas, overflowing from blocked drainage systems, and sometimes spilling into homes. This public health hazard severely undermines Uganda’s commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 6, which promotes access to clean water and sanitation for all.
-Grand plan gathering dust-
To operationalise the Kampala Sanitation Improvement and Financing Strategy 2015, a total of USD 271.7 million will be required to finance this strategy. The share of infrastructure costs for onsite sanitation and sewerage improvement until 2030 is estimated at USD 77.1 million (28%) and USD 194.6 million (72%), respectively.
The investments by households to build toilets conforming to KCCA standards are estimated to be around USD 30.4 million22, which will need affordable financing, either in terms of low-interest loans or partial subsidies to facilitate demand.
According to the KCCA budget, to improve KCCA-run facilities, schools, health centres, and public toilets as per KCCA standards is estimated at USD 15.34 million up to 2030, and to maintain the facilities with adequate hygiene levels is estimated at USD 939.000 annually.
Additional demand creation activities around private schools, health centres, and commercially-run public sanitation facilities are estimated at around USD 6.37 million for the next ten years.
The strategy adds that, to improve the faecal sludge collection and transport, by each division, an estimate of about USD 2.0million is required to improve the pit emptying business.
According to Vicent Byendaimira Biribonwa, the Director of Physical Planning at KCCA, the sewage challenge is attributed to the delayed investment in the area that has since attracted private firms who now dominate the area.
As a result, he said most homes are not connected to the sewage channels despite being close to them.
“We have not had investment in that area(sewage) for a long time. So because of that, most people resort to treating their sewage with facilities in their compounds,’’ Byendaimira said.
Worse still, a metropolis teeming with millions of people operates with just 16 public toilets.
Despite the sector having private farms, Byendaimira said they have not had a breakthrough in having strong technologies that could treat the sewage.
‘’We have seen private farms here which are trying some technologies but we haven’t got a breakthrough yet for us to use. We hope that we get technologies that can do better and treat the sewage,’’ he said.
For Bileni who is using the bucket and saw dust approach to recycle the human waste into manure, the authority has been slow to implement advanced technologies to the sewage treatment and management plan that would rid many communities of the associated sewage risks.
“We have taken our appeal to KCCA to partner with us, every time we are about to start, something happens, the new management is changed and we fail along the way,’’ Bileni said.
On the continued drainage problems in the city, Byendaimira said the authority is working on it with support from different firms that will be expected early next month.
“In November, we will be getting farms on board to deal with the drainage elements in the city, but of course you have also to combine it with a distilling management system to make sure that there is less exposure of soil in the drainage channels,’’ Byendaimira said.
Access to sanitation is a right enshrined in Uganda’s Public Health Act and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6). Yet, the budget for urban sanitation remains disproportionately low. Much of the funding goes into large infrastructure projects in formal neighborhoods, while informal areas—where most urban poor live—receive little attention.
Public health experts warn that this neglect has wide consequences. “When informal settlements handle sanitation informally, it creates inequality in access to health services,” says Dr. Brenda Kaggwa, an environmental health specialist. “Communities are forced into unsafe coping mechanisms because government oversight and enforcement are weak.”
As the city skyline glows in the evening, the youth of Kamwokya go about collecting buckets—turning what others discard into something life-giving. Yet, their work also poses a question policymakers can’t ignore: If young people can turn waste into wealth, why can’t those in power turn policy into action?
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