Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Target 6.2 in Ethiopia: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Sanitation is deemed to be a human right. Improved sanitation service access is essential for every community’s socio-economic well-being and sustainable development. However, there has been limited research that has evaluated many current sanitation practices across various areas in Ethiopia. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to assess the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6.2 in Ethiopia, concerning major challenges and opportunities available towards achieving SDG targets. The data used to evaluate this review was obtained from WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report, Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) data, and scientific journal publications stemming mostly from the last decade, to show the research results on water and sanitation, particularly SDGs 6.2 prospects and challenges to provide a general outlook for policymakers in Ethiopia. As a result, this paper analyzed that even though Ethiopia had substantial progress in improving sanitation facilities in the past decades; its coverage is still one of the lowest throughout the globe. Currently, nearly 70 million people (out of about 115 million people) are using unimproved sanitation facilities in Ethiopia. The main reasons for this lowest achievement are as follows: Firstly, sanitation doesn’t have a specific organizational “home,” implying that roles are disseminated across many sectors. Secondly, the amount of money allocated to the sector is low, and liquid waste disposal facilities are almost non-existent. Thirdly, the sanitation strategy’s implementation is not straightforward. Given the existing state of knowledge, the most important strategies needed to tackle the multilateral problem in Ethiopia will be defining specifically identified institutional accountability, capacity building and awareness creation, clear sanitation resource allocation and sustainable sanitation approach concerned with the protection of the environment. The analysis of challenges and opportunities for sanitation services in Ethiopia might be useful for the improvement of SDG 6.2 in other developing countries.