Out-of-home toilet access, transport disadvantage, and dignified ageing in Africa

Research on mobility, ageing, and population health is increasingly engaging with the mobility and wellbeing of older people in Africa. This long-overdue shift begins to correct a literature historically shaped by Western contexts and positions the field better to address Africa's rapid and diverse ageing transition in the decades ahead. Yet access to out-of-home toilets remains largely overlooked as one critical factor shaping later-life mobility and social participation. This paper addresses that gap by informing interventions and policies that integrate safe and age-friendly toilet access across public spaces, transport systems, and everyday mobility networks. Provision of such toilet access is essential to enabling older people to remain active, mobile, and socially connected. The paper advances research on population ageing and transport-related health in three ways. First, it recentres Africa within a body of work that has largely examined toilets as mobility-enabling infrastructure in later life through Global North perspectives, while recognising the continent's distinct and differentiated social, spatial, and infrastructural contexts. Second, it develops a holistic understanding of transport disadvantage in later life as an embodied experience shaped not only by structural transport barriers and age-related physiological change, but also by the fundamental bodily needs that arise during travel. Third, it establishes the foundations for a new interdisciplinary research agenda linking transport geography, sanitation, ageing, and population health to support more responsive and inclusive policy on toilet access, mobility, and wellbeing in later life. Overall, the paper positions access to out-of-home toilets as a central requirement for achieving a healthier, more dignified, independent, and socially engaged experience of later life.