FASEP Grandeur Nature in Madagascar

Madagascar suffers from a deficit in water and sanitation management (collective, semi-collective or individual), thus discharging domestic wastewater directly and without treatment into the natural environment, with a major impact on health, education, the economy and the environment (surface and groundwater).

From a health point of view, diarrhoeal diseases, linked to a poor sanitation and hygiene system or to the non-potability of the water used for different purposes (drinking water, water for crop irrigation, washing water, bathing, etc.), are the second most common cause of morbidity.

Faced with the challenge of sanitation, the Madagascan Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (MEAH), in partnership with the ECOBIRD - ARTELIA consortium, supported by a monitoring committee made up of NGOs, companies, a competitiveness cluster and a public institution, are setting up, with the financial support of the French government, a pilot vegetated sanitation system for the treatment of gutter water (wastewater and rainwater).

This Nature-based Solution for sanitation meets the needs of both Malagasy and African cities and towns in terms of ecological and economical treatment of their effluents. This demonstrator combines the strong points of the vegetalized sanitation systems developed in France (simplicity, robustness and integrated sludge management) with a soft intensification (mechanized air insufflation) allowing to limit the land use and to improve the performances.

The long-term objective is to demonstrate the proper functioning of the system and its suitability for the local constraints in Madagascar, including the reuse of quality treated water. The objective is also to propose a Nature-based Solution that can be adapted and replicated on a larger scale, in different contexts (sludge and faecal matter, raw effluents, etc.) in Madagascar and more globally in Africa. Finally, a last objective of the project is to train a new generation of engineers and technicians to ensure the proper construction, operation and maintenance of such solutions.