ADDIS LETTER :An Irish Aid-funded sanitary enterprise in the Ethiopean capital is an example of how services can be made to work for poor people, writes MOLLY McCLOSKEY
I AM touring the public toilets of Addis Ababa, my guides a blind man, a partially deaf man, and a former leprosy sufferer.
They are, respectively, the chairman, secretary and accountant of the Yenegew Sew Sanitary Service Co-operative. The weather in Addis on this late October day in the dry season is typically springlike. Addis sits at about 2,500 metres above sea level, against Ethiopia’s Entoto mountain range. One feels as though one is in a bowl, a bowl held high in the air.
With us are two staff from the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN agency tasked with advancing opportunities for employment in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity. The ILO has invited me here to look at projects being funded by Irish Aid, the Irish Government’s programme of assistance to developing countries. Over three days, I visit the annual jobs fair (focusing, this year, on employment of people with disabilities), a physically disabled woman who has used micro-financing to start a small leather goods business, the office of the Tigray Disabled Veterans’ Association, a primary school run by an incredibly astute young blind woman, and the Yenegew Co-op sanitation facilities. It is the last of these that makes the greatest impression on me.
The Yenegew Co-op was formed in 2004 after a proposal by the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities won a prize in the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Competition in 2003. The competition aims to fund the most innovative ideas in development, and that year’s theme was “Making Services Work for Poor People”.
Irish Aid has been in partnership with the ILO since 2001, funding projects promoting women’s entrepreneurship, employment of people with disabilities and development of legal frameworks for the disabled. (In 2008, Irish Aid signed an agreement with ILO for a new three-year grant of €9 million.) Irish Aid supported the Yenegew co-op from its inception, funding training for co-op leaders and providing working capital. At its 30 sites, the co-op now employs 184 people – all of whom have visual, hearing or mobility impairments, are former leprosy sufferers, or whose children have intellectual disabilities. Four years ago, workers earned 100 birr per month. Now the wage is 600 birr (€32) per month, on the higher end of the scale for unskilled labour.
Many of the co-op’s sites include showers and hand laundry facilities. A buzzy atmosphere prevails, more like a busy cafe than a public sanitation facility. Music blares from nearby streets, the ubiquitous baby blue Ladas – the city’s taxis – chug past in their varying states of disrepair. My favourite of those I visit is the one overlooking Meskel Square, an Addis landmark where public gatherings and festivals are held. Ascending the curved slope that banks the square is a kind of amphitheatre of what look like the lanes of a running track. And, indeed, local runners train here. The staff at Meskel Square are proud of the fact that Haile Gebrselassie – one of the greatest distance runners in history – brings his club here for showers after training. The walls are painted a pale lime green. Everything looks clean. When we arrive, the staff are just preparing for a mid-morning coffee, accompanied by the usual bowl of popcorn.
Perhaps it is the fact that Yenegew is a co-operative that explains the sense of ownership and goodwill. Perhaps it is the fact that the co-op’s employees never dreamed of having jobs, not with their disabilities, not in a city where the unemployment rate is over 40 per cent. (The UN estimates that 82 per cent of disabled people in the developing world live below the poverty line.) Perhaps it is also because the sanitation services are desperately needed, integrated into the life of the city. In Addis, 24 per cent of housing units have no bathrooms at all and 45 per cent share pit latrines. The project is thus making a significant contribution to public health and hygiene.
My guides want me to see everything. “C’mon,” they say, pointing towards the showers. “Have a look.” I peer down the stairs and see a soapy arm and leg jack-knifing out from behind a shower wall. If I were a blusher, I’d blush. Instead, I whisper, “There’s a man in there.” “Ahh,” they smile, chuckling at my modesty.
Like any successful enterprise, the co-op is fighting off poachers. Having seen that the sites can be profitable – the gross take last year was 1,743,100 birr (€93,000) – businessmen are trying to muscle in. Last year, on the pretext that it was being mismanaged, the municipality took possession of one of the sites and awarded it to a private businessman. The co-op sued the municipality in an Addis court and, in July, the individual was ordered to hand back the site. The co-op is still waiting for the order to be enforced, hopeful that it will happen soon.