Department of Microbial, Cellular and Molecular Biology together with Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering held a national symposium on “Prospects and Challenges of Resource-Oriented Sanitation Systems in Ethiopia” on March 12, 2019 at AAiT.

The aim of the symposium was to communicate the research outputs from two interdisciplinary projects focusing on nutrient reclamation from waste and its preparation and application as fertilizer. 

Regarding to this, different research papers and innovation outputs were available for discussion. The main outputs discussed in the presentations were urine-derived fertilizers production using locally available resources such as water from Beseka Lake and the invasive plant Prosopis.

The symposium was believed to pave way towards translating the research outputs into products via effective partnership with relevant stakeholders such as the private sector and the smallholder farmers.

To address questions such as the impact of urine/wastewater-derived fertilizers on the crop, soil and leaching water, and other questions like the potential of the fertilizers in crop pests, green house-based tests will be performed in a modern green house facility established in Sidist kilo Campus of Addis Ababa University. 

The green house establishment was supported by research funds from USAID and AAU granted for the interdisciplinary researches on nutrient recovery form waste.