Advocacy campaign 'We C.R.A.V.E Just Sanitation for African Cities' launched

Led by Prof. Adriana Allen, the research project OVERDUE: Tackling the Sanitation Taboo has launched the We C.R.A.V.E Just Sanitation for African Cities advocacy campaign where C.R.A.V.E stands for Commit, Recognise, Act, Valorise and Engender. The campaign mobilises support for localising SDG6 with a feminist lens to forefront the needs, capacities and aspirations of women and girls as sanitation users and providers across the sanitation service chain. 

The campaign forms one of the key legacy elements built throughout the action-research project OVERDUE over the last three years. It has been built from the bottom up by partners from the seven OVERDUE cities (Abidjan, Antananarivo, Beira, Bukavu, Freetown, Mwanza and Saint Louis), that is, by sanitation practitioners who are getting things done on the ground. The campaign has already been endorsed by diverse actors – members of CSOs, NGOs, local governments, and utility providers – who are committed and well positioned to embrace the challenge of building equitable sanitation for women and men across urban Africa. 

In a regional meeting in Nairobi on 11-12 September 2023, the partners will discuss contributions from many cities across Africa to negotiate and agree on a Call for Action that will feed into the campaign and be shared at the SDG Summit in New York later that month. 

Read the draft Call for Action, watch the endorsements, and join the campaign here.

For further information, please get in touch with Prof. Allen at a.allen@ucl.ac.uk