Shit Matters! Assessing sociocultural barriers and opportunities for upscaling adoption of human faeces derived fertilizers in central Uganda

Sammanfattning: Nutrient recovered faecal sludge is a novel alternative fertilizer product, and is proposed to be promoted in places where improvement in sanitation management is needed, for example in Uganda’s capital Kampala. However, Uganda and most of Africa is perceived as a faecofobic area, i.e. where faeces are stigmatized and guarded by taboos, and there is lacking information regarding Ugandan farmers’ perception of this type of fertilizer. To understand if promotion of nutrient recovered faecal sludge is viable in this particular sociocultural context, we carried through an exploratory case study. By conducting interviews with farmers currently using this product; focus group discussions with farmers not using it; and facilitating a forecasting scenario workshop we have attempted to assess potential sociocultural barriers towards and opportunities for the adoption of nutrient recovered faecal sludge. Even though human faeces are conceptualized as dirty and the social norm is to not associate oneself with human faeces in central Uganda, practices such as planting banana stands in pit latrine and eating its fruit are common. Attitudes towards the use of nutrient recovered faecal sludge are somewhat varied, but in general farmers are interested in learning more and positive towards the innovation if it can meet their demands of a fertilizer. However, to scale up the use of nutrient recovered faecal sludge, any promotion program must sensibly navigate around the sociocultural barriers in place, in order to become a user-friendly product closing the nutrient loop and imultaneously promoting new ways of sanitation management.