Why waste management remains difficult across Africa

January 14, 2026

Dear subscriber,

Africa’s waste keeps piling up, and cities are scrambling to keep up. But what really drives the chaos, and why does our rubbish always seem one step ahead?

Mercy Maina – Editor

A new study published in Nature Communications finds that widespread burning of plastics in households across the Global South is driven less by individual choice than by structural failures in waste systems, notably accumulated, uncollected waste and the absence of affordable and reliable collection services.

  • With population growth expected to accelerate across Africa, the study warns that plastic burning could become more common, with bans likely to backfire unless collection services expand in parallel.

  • Waste management across Africa remains constrained by uneven service coverage, affordability gaps, weak municipal financing, fragmented informal systems, logistical barriers linked to urban form and the prevalence of mixed waste streams.

  • Our take: Without addressing these structural barriers, downstream infrastructure and circular ambitions in Africa will continue to underperform… Read more (2 min)

Denmark-based consultancy NTU International has for the second time in as many months, topped circular economy recruitment across Africa, posting 21 of the 49 advertised roles. Specialising in programme management mainly for EU-funded projects, the firm is seeking circular economy engineering and technological solutions experts.

  • NTU is creating a pool of junior and senior non-key experts to support the implementation of an upcoming EU circular economy and water facility project across Africa. 

  • In December 2025, it advertised 28 roles for circular economy policy and legal experts for the same project. 

  • Explore the latest openings across Africa’s circular sector here (2 min)

As Africa confronts the escalating cost of plastic pollution, Frank Adiga of UNECA argues that bans and clean-up efforts alone will not deliver lasting impact. Drawing on his role in developing Africa’s first continental plastic pollution strategy, he calls for inclusive, systemic and data-driven approaches to advance circular economy outcomes.

  • Mr Adiga is a Chartered Environmentalist and currently a Regional Consultant on Circular Economy at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). He spearheaded the recent development of the Continental Strategy for the Control and Mitigation of Plastic Pollution on Aquatic Biodiversity and the Environment in Africa, an initiative funded by AU-IBAR and the Government of Sweden (Sida).

  • He argues that effective plastic pollution control requires co-design with communities, system-wide interventions across the plastics value chain and harmonised data to guide action, moving Africa beyond isolated bans towards a circular economy that prevents waste at source and delivers measurable environmental outcomes.

  • Read the full opinion article here (2 min)

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Source: Molfa David Ibrahim

 Plastic bottles hanging from a tree at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Events

🗓️ Register for Africa’s Green Economy Summit in South Africa (February 24)

🗓️ Network at the Conference on Packaging & Circular Economy (March 9)

Various

💰 OceanHub Africa announces a $120,000 fund for startups tackling plastic waste 

💸 Africa’s circular economy to benefit from Standard Chartered’s $1.2bn green bond

🗑️ How Nigeria’s private sector is transforming plastic waste into opportunity

🩹 How ‘The Plastic Man’ is taking on Africa’s waste crisis

📈 Market forecast for chemical recycling solutions for end-of-life vehicle plastics

🛞 How South Africa’s waste tyre crisis is spiralling out of control

📛 How plastic pollution threatens life around Lake Tanganyika

♻️ Tackling Africa’s e-waste through the circular economy

Seen on LinkedIn 

Valentine Inditi, Head of Marketing at Jirani Recyclers, says, “When waste is your only resource, you don’t debate circularity. You live it. Organic waste becomes feed. Plastic becomes income. Knowledge becomes power. What policy papers describe as “innovation” is daily life for many urban poor communities. The future of the circular economy will not be invented in boardrooms. It will be refined in communities.”