Why waste management remains difficult across Africa

January 14, 2026

Source: UNEP/Duncan Moore

From the newsletter

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.

More details

  • The study findings reinforce a long-standing reality in African cities that waste management struggles not because solutions are unknown, but because systems consistently fail at the point of collection. One of the most persistent challenges is partial and uneven service coverage. UNEP’s Africa Waste Management Outlook notes that reliable collection and transport services are typically concentrated in city centres, with suburbs and informal areas receiving limited or inconsistent coverage. In cities such as Lagos and Nairobi, collection rates drop sharply outside planned neighbourhoods. As cities expand outward and densify inward, waste service footprints have failed to keep pace, creating pockets where waste accumulates by default rather than by choice.

  • Even where collection services exist, household-level barriers often limit access, with affordability being a key constraint. In many cities, waste collection is treated as a fee-based service rather than a basic urban utility. For example, in Nairobi’s Eastlands area, residents typically pay private waste collectors between $12 and $40 per month, a cost often out of reach for households with volatile or informal incomes, who may opt out or rely on irregular alternatives. This undermines municipal cost recovery, with UNEP noting that in cities such as Accra and Dar es Salaam, user fees are insufficient to sustain services but difficult to raise without excluding poorer households, weakening system-wide financial viability and limiting operators’ ability to maintain reliable collection.

  • Financing constraints further limit the ability of cities to scale or stabilise waste services, presenting a persistent challenge across the region. Waste management is largely a municipal responsibility, yet local governments often operate with narrow tax bases, limited own‑source revenues and constrained fiscal space for capital investment. UNECA’s Expanding Municipal Finance in Africa project highlights that many African cities lack sufficient financial capacity and revenue‑raising autonomy to meet growing service demands, restricting their ability to invest in infrastructure and maintain reliable operations. 

  • Where municipal systems cannot fill the gap, informal waste collectors often step in, operating in parallel to formal services. In cities such as Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Lagos, and Cape Town, informal waste pickers provide significant collection and recovery services in low-income areas, often without formal recognition or coordination. While this fills critical gaps, it reinforces fragmented coverage and selective collection rather than building cohesive, citywide systems.

  • Physical and urban design constraints further complicate waste collection, raising costs and limiting service coverage even where systems exist. Narrow roads, unplanned settlements, and long distances between neighbourhoods and disposal sites have been identified as key challenges, often increasing operating costs and reducing efficiency. These limitations restrict vehicle access in dense urban areas, making standardised collection models difficult to implement.

Our take

  • Without addressing the structural barriers that prevent waste in Africa from reliably entering the system, downstream infrastructure and circular ambitions will continue to underperform, regardless of policy intent or technological promise.

  • For businesses in the region’s waste management sector, the structural gaps are both a risk and an opportunity, they constrain revenue and operations, but also reveal untapped markets in underserved urban areas.