On January 27, President Joseph Boakai, in his second State of the Nation address claimed that 42% of Liberia’s population still lacks basic toilet facilities. Pres. Boakai made this statement while discussing ongoing sanitation challenges and highlighting his administration’s efforts to improve public health over the past year.
The claim
The exact extract from Pres. Boakai’s SONA reads, “Forty-two percent of our population still lacks basic toilet facilities.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check if 42% of Liberia’s population still lacks basic toilet facilities, we reviewed the 2022 census report from the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), which revealed that 32% of Liberia’s population lacks access to basic toilet facilities.
LISGIS defines individuals lacking access to toilet facilities as those who practice open defecation. This includes defecating in open spaces such as fields, forests, bushes, bodies of water, or other open areas.
Meanwhile, a review of the 2023 UNICEF Country Office Annual Report reveals that 35% of Liberia’s population practice open defecation. A portion of this reports that “Efforts towards the attainment of Key Result for Children #8 resulted in a reduction of the proportion of people practicing open defecation from 37.7% in 2022 to 35% in 2023
In addition, the World Bank reported in 2024 that nearly 40% of Liberia’s population practices open defecation in its Climate and Development Report for Liberia. This number represents Liberians who lack basic toilet facilities.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that President Boakai’s claim that 42% of Liberians lack basic toilet facilities is mostly correct.
Since the 2022 Census report, which highlighted 32% of people lacking basic toilet facilities, there has been a growing trend in the number of people lacking access to basic toilet facilities across various reports as captured in reports by UNICEF and the World Bank.
