How Kenyan scooped global award

Some years ago, answering a call of nature in Nairobi’s central business district was a nightmare. All City Council toilets were run and managed by street boys and goons. People were always mugged or forced to part with more money by the street boys who were armed with human waste.

That is no more, following the entry of the famous Iko-Toilet a brain child of Mr David Kuria, which ended the long suffering of most residents in Nairobi. Mr Kuria has been on a mission to ensure that the city toilets are both pleasant and memorable.

Mobile phone

One pays only five shillings to use the decent Iko toilets at various points in the city, complete with music from a radio. There are also shoe shine services as well as outlets for snacks, fruits and water. You may soon be doing mobile phone money transfers in the toilet and withdrawing cash from teller machines like those in banks.

Through this, Kuria has won the World Economic Forum’s Africa Entrepreneur of the Year award. His toilets are now in high demand in most countries in the world after several leaders who attended the awards ceremony in Pretoria, South Africa, voted his idea as the best in developing countries.

When the Nation visited him at his Nairobi office on Wednesday, Mr Kuria said his innovation was a result of failure by the City Council to provide clean and user-friendly toilets. “I thought for some time before coming up with the idea,” he said adding: “People had nowhere to go and thugs were holding them to ransom in the few facilities then run by the council”.

According to him, there are 12 complete toilets in Nairobi while another 18 are to be completed by the end of this month. The project is also set to roll out to other parts of the country. Municipalities and county councils give plots at suitable sites where Ecotact, Mr Kuria’s firm, builds the toilets.

Each toilet costs not less than Sh2 million and Ecotact manages them for a period of five years to recoup the investment then hands them over to the councils. He said the cost of materials was a big challenge affecting their operations, which could have seen the Iko toilets spread to most towns in the country.

“We are getting support from UNDP and other partners like East African Breweries, the Global Water International and the Rotary International” he said. Mr Kuria, who studied architecture before he was bitten by the environment and sanitation bug that led to a change of career, said they are going to move upcountry to initiate more projects.

We hope by the end of the year more than 1,000 people will be employed to work on the toilets. That is part of our goal”. Currently more than 120 people are employed in the Iko toilets, he adds. His major worry is the shortage of water in the city, which could raise the cost of using the facilities to Sh10.

“We are worried because when there is scarcity of water, we are forced to buy it at an additional cost,” he said. He said they currently get water from private vendors who sell to them at Sh10,000 per tanker. He urged the city council to help them end the water crisis.

The 37-year-old father of two was awarded the prestigious global entrepreneurship medal for his outstanding show of social responsibility in Africa, for his pragmatic, visionary and courageous contributions that significantly improved the state of the world, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The ceremony in South Africa was attended by among other leaders Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, South African president Jacob Zuma, Rupiah Banda of Zambia, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Mr Kuria said his innovative approach to the vital toilet service has earned him recognition from the World Toilet Organisation, based in China, with the inclusion of ‘Iko’ toilets in the hall of fame of sanitation.

Plans to expand

He is also among 2,000 businesspeople recognised by Ashoka, a Washington based organisation and a 2008 winner of Global Water Challenge award. He plans to expand these facilities countrywide. “We also want to go to other countries. Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa have already approached me for Iko toilets,” he says. Mr Kuria has also landed an invitation from former US president Bill Clinton to the Clinton Global Initiative conference to be held in New York in September.

Through a personal letter shown to the Nation, Mr Clinton said Mr Kuria’s innovative work should be shared by all people focusing sanitation in the world. “Your contribution towards sanitation in Kenya should be heard by all people in the world and to that, I am inviting you to attend the conference in September,” reads part of Mr Clinton’s letter.