It is estimated that 70% of the world’s population will be urbanised by 2050, increasing the considerable strain on cities in low- and middle-income countries who already have poorly resourced sanitation services. The City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) project, launched in 2017, emphasised this need for a “radical shift in mind-sets and practices… to address the urban sanitation crisis”. However, to shift mind-sets, there is first a need to understand current thinking and perceptions of all sanitation stakeholders in these settings.

This project focuses on five global South urban settings (in Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Mexico). It will map the stakeholders in a target city within each country, and evaluate whether they consider and how they define inclusion when developing and implementing urban sanitation programmes. Targeted interviews with stakeholders from a range of disciplines and sectors will help to identify common challenges and practices in each city, as well as commonalities between countries. This will provide insights on how to tackle a ‘shift in mind-set’ towards a more transdisciplinary approach to inclusive urban sanitation provision, based on common language and consensus.