Opinion: Why most recycling businesses in Africa fail

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Across Africa, recycling is promoted as a key enabler of the circular economy, with numerous startups emerging to seize the opportunity. Yet many ventures collapse within a few years, revealing that passion and demand alone are not enough. Kings Ene, a circular economy entrepreneur in Nigeria, highlights why these businesses fail and what could be done to ensure success.

• Mr Ene is the founder of EcoWealth Solutions, a Nigeria-based consultancy advancing circular economy and sustainability solutions. He specialises in waste-to-value systems, recycling business models and circular trade across Africa, helping entrepreneurs, SMEs and institutions design practical systems that turn waste challenges into scalable opportunities.

• He argues that most recycling ventures in Africa fail not for lack of demand or commitment but because they underestimate operational realities. He stresses that for recycling to scale, businesses must adopt system-focused models while policymakers and investors create enabling frameworks that support sustainable commercially viable operations.

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By Kings Ene

Across Africa, recycling is often presented as a silver bullet for environmental challenges, youth unemployment, and urban sanitation. Governments, NGOs, and private investors increasingly speak about circular economy models and waste-to-wealth opportunities. Yet, despite growing attention, many recycling ventures fail within a few years, or never reach meaningful scale. 

From my experience working with community waste systems and recycling entrepreneurs in Nigeria and engaging with practitioners across Africa, the failure is rarely due to lack of passion, demand, or good intentions. Instead, recycling businesses fail because they underestimate the importance of systems, economics, and operational discipline. Here are the most common structural reasons recycling ventures collapse, and what African entrepreneurs and policymakers must do differently.

1. Unstable supply is the silent killer

Most recycling businesses assume waste is abundant and therefore easy to collect. In reality, usable recyclable materials are scarce and competitive. PET bottles, HDPE containers, and other high-value plastics move through informal value chains dominated by collectors, aggregators, and middlemen. Prices fluctuate, and supply can dry up overnight. Many startups begin with a pilot collection drive or a short-term partnership with a community group, only to realize that volumes drop once incentives end. Without structured sourcing contracts, aggregation hubs, or partnerships with waste pickers and municipalities, supply becomes unpredictable, and operations collapse. What works is long-term supply agreements with aggregators and community collectors, decentralized collection hubs to reduce transport costs, incentive models that reward consistent quality and volume, not one-off campaigns 

 2. Sorting and quality are underestimated

Recycling is not just about collecting waste—it is about delivering specification-grade material to buyers. Contamination, moisture, mixed polymers, and poor baling reduce the value of recyclables or make them unsellable.  Many African recyclers learn this the hard way. They invest in collection but fail to invest in sorting infrastructure, training, and quality control. Buyers reject loads, prices drop, and margins disappear. What works is basic sorting protocols and visual guides for collectors, simple quality assurance checks before aggregation, and training informal collectors and staff on polymer identification and contamination control

3. Price volatility is real but manageable

Commodity prices for plastics are volatile. Global oil prices, local demand, and policy changes affect recycling markets. Entrepreneurs who assume fixed prices often face cash flow crises when prices fall. However, price volatility alone does not kill recycling businesses. Poor financial planning does. What works is conservative pricing assumptions in financial models, buffer margins and diversified buyers, long-term contracts where possible, or minimum price guarantees with partners.

4. Logistics costs are often ignored

In many African cities, transport is the largest cost line. Poor road networks, fuel price fluctuations, and fragmented collection points make logistics expensive. Startups often focus on collection without optimizing routing, storage, and aggregation. The result is high per-ton costs that erode profitability.What works is hub-and-spoke aggregation models, community-based micro-aggregation points, data-driven routing and batching of collections 

5. Collecting waste is not running a business 

A critical mindset shift is required. Many initiatives treat recycling as a social project or cleanup campaign rather than an enterprise. Collectors focus on volume. Operators focus on systems, contracts, margins, and repeatability.  A recycling business becomes sustainable when it works every week without constant donor funding, volunteer drives, or founder intervention. What works: Clear operational workflows from collection to sale; defined roles, KPIs, and accountability, and business models that generate predictable revenue, not only impact metrics

6. Regulation and enablers matter more than we admit

Policy frameworks, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, licensing regimes, and fiscal incentives shape the recycling ecosystem. Weak enforcement and fragmented governance create uncertainty for investors and operators. However, regulation alone does not create functioning markets. Institutional capacity, transparent licensing, dispute resolution mechanisms, and predictable administrative processes are equally critical. These enablers translate policy into bankable outcomes and investor confidence. 

The African opportunity: From projects to systems

Africa’s circular economy potential is enormous. Rapid urbanization, a young workforce, and growing consumer markets mean waste volumes will continue to rise. This is both a crisis and an opportunity. But scaling recycling in Africa requires moving beyond pilots and donor-driven projects toward commercially viable systems. Entrepreneurs must design for volatility, not hope it disappears. Policymakers must strengthen regulatory frameworks while enabling private sector participation. Investors must recognize that recycling is infrastructure, not charity. 

What success looks like

Successful recycling ventures in Africa share common traits:  Structured supply chains with formal and informal actors, quality-controlled sorting and processing financial models built for price and logistics volatility, clear operational systems and governance structures, and alignment with regulatory frameworks and market incentives. These are not glamorous stories. They are operationally complex, capital-intensive, and deeply local. But they are what turn waste collection into a circular economy.

Call to action

For Policymakers: Design recycling policies that fund and integrate collection systems, not just downstream recycling plants. Incentivize aggregation centers, data reporting, and long-term offtake contracts to stabilize supply chains. 

For Entrepreneurs and Investors: Treat recycling as an infrastructure business, not a charity project. Build systems for consistent supply, quality control, logistics, and pricing risk management. The businesses that win are those that think like operators, not collectors. 

Recycling businesses in Africa do not fail because people do not care. They fail because systems are not designed to survive real-world conditions.  The future of Africa’s circular economy depends on a shift from passion-driven projects to system-driven enterprises. Only then can recycling move from symbolic cleanups to scalable, investable infrastructure.