South Africa through the SABS (the South-African Standards Office) hosted in mid-June 2017, an international meeting on the development of the ISO PC 305 standards relating to technologies and sustainable sewer-less systems.

The Executive Director of the African Water Association (AfWA), Mr. Sylvain USHER, and the RASOP-Africa program Coordinator, Mr. Mbaye MBEGUERE, were present during this meeting. AfWA, which was already involved with the preliminary work on May 17-18, 2017 in Dakar, Senegal for the development of the ISO PC 305 standard, once again actively took part in the discussions and highlighted the RASOP-Africa Program, intended to strengthen African operators in autonomous sanitation and fecal sludge management programs through peer-to-peer partnerships for the benefit of five African capital cities. The RASOP-Africa Program is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The new international ISO/PC 305 standard aims to facilitate the manufacturing, marketing and massive deployment of sustainable sewer-less sanitary systems towards potential purchasers. In the long term, the PC 305 standard, which is intended to be sustainable, will be applied to individual and community non-autonomous sanitation systems that comply with the defined discharge requirements.

It should be noted that the meeting gathered several international experts, specialists in sanitation issues, more precisely in sustainable sewer-less systems.