sanloop is a Swiss nonprofit association (Verein) registered in Aarau. We fund and support the development and implementation of the MDDT (Mobile Dry Diversion Toilet)—a household toilet that requires no water, no sewage connection, and produces fertilizer as a byproduct—across sub-Saharan Africa, beginning in Nigeria and Kenya.
The MDDT (Mobile Dry Diversion Toilet) originated as a collaborative design initiative between Prof. Fabienne Hoelzel, professor of urban design, and Prof. Uwe Fischer, professor of industrial design, at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart). The design is modular: the core component is the diversion interface, precision-manufactured in Germany by thermoforming. Everything else—frame, cladding, containers—is locally sourced from markets in Africa. The first prototypes were built manually in the Stuttgart workshops. When these were tested simultaneously in Addis Abeba and Lagos, local adaptation in Addis Abeba produced a square frame that replaced the original round design—and became the template for all current units.
From 2019, implementation was carried out by FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION, the Nigerian urban design and research practice founded by Fabienne Hoelzel in 2013, drawing on professional experience in São Paulo, Lagos, and Nairobi since 2010. The transition from research to field implementation was formally agreed between FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. In 2019, two fully functional MDDT prototypes were implemented in Lagos by FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION, funded by the Consulate General of Germany in Lagos. Both recipients had participated in the community workshops and implementation process. One prototype went to Dorcas Adedoyin—still in use today, six years later. In the second household, the male head denied his wife access to the toilet she had helped build. This was not an isolated incident. FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION documented multiple cases in which women were denied use and ownership of their MDDT—even after confirmed agreements to the contrary. These failures were not incidental. They became the founding principle of the Women for MDDT Network: every MDDT goes directly to a named woman, with no intermediary. No exceptions. This is not ideology. It is what the field taught us. From 2020, implementation expanded in Lagos—and from 2025 in Nairobi—using the adjusted, industrially produced interface thermoformed in Germany. The MDDT has been continuously improved since.
Thirty MDDTs have been implemented across seven years of deliberate, adaptive work. The pace was intentional—testing the ownership model, the waste processing chain, and the network until each element worked. That foundation is why sanloop now exists: to scale what has been proven without losing the political integrity that made it worth proving.
sanloop was established as a dedicated Swiss nonprofit to resource and scale what FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION proved was working. FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION remains the local implementation partner in Nigeria, with a formal partnership structured through service agreements for specific deliverables—currently 10 MDDTs in Lagos, 10 MDDTs in Enugu-Emene, one Solar Drying Facility, and one Urine-to-Fertilizer Plant. FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION operates a broader urban design and research practice beyond the MDDT program.
MDDT owner since 2019
MDDT Ambassador
Dorcas owns the first MDDT household toilet ever built—still in use today. As sanloop’s pioneer owner, she has demonstrated for seven years that waterless, woman-owned sanitation works.
Fabienne Hoelzel is a feminist urbanist whose work addresses how we build just cities on a planet in crisis—particularly for those facing compounded exclusions at the intersection of gender, race, class, and displacement. Professor of Urban Design at ABK Stuttgart and Founder of FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION, she builds infrastructure where it has been denied—sanitation, shelter, health facilities—and esearches how urban systems produce gendered violence. In 2026, she founded sanloop, a Swiss nonprofit scaling circular sanitation globally. She works in and on Lagos, Nairobi, Dadaab, and Gaza not because these places are peripheral but because they are ahead—revealing what cities everywhere face as displacement, infrastructure failure, and contested reconstruction intensify. Her work has been shortlisted for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge and featured on Swiss national television.
MDDT owner since 2022
MDDT Ambassador
Jane has owned and operated her MDDT household toilet in Lagos since 2022 and is one of the founding Ambassadors of the Women for MDDT Network, recruiting and supporting women across her community.
Dipl. Bauingenieur ETH SIA
sanloop operates at the intersection of infrastructure and politics. This paper sets out how we think about that tension—specifically, how the institutional channels through which we scale (donor metrics, government partnerships, quarterly dashboards) risk transforming the feminist political character of the work they are meant to support. Feminist development scholars have documented this dynamic for decades: the moment a radical idea enters an institutional funding stream, something of its political content gets stripped away. We name this tension publicly because we believe accountability to it matters—and because we think an organization that won’t name it probably isn’t managing it.
sanloop is a member of VaLoo, the Swiss Circular Sanitation Network.
The Enugu-Emene composting facilities are being developed with technical support from Vuna, Switzerland, pioneers of nutrient recovery from human waste.
In Enugu-Emene, MDDT is implemented in collaboration with Olileanya.
In Lagos, MDDT is implemented with FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION. The 2026 Women for MDDT campaign is funded by the Heinrich Böll Foundation Abuja.
sanloop is a Swiss nonprofit association registered in Aarau. Our governance documents are publicly available.