Uncollected trash is a very big problem in developing
regions of the world, especially Africa. According to a World Bank Urban Development Series report, Africa
currently produces just about 70 million tons of waste every year. With its
rapid urbanization and growing economies, waste production in Africa will
exceed 160 million tons by the year 2025.
Waste is a problem because it causes pollution, disease and
environmental crisis when it’s not properly disposed. The good news is, most of
the waste produced in Africa can be recycled and reused to create new products.
Sadly, only about 10 percent of the waste generated every
day in Africa is collected. The rest usually ends up in illegal dump sites,
gutters and drainages in Africa’s cities.
In this article, I’ll introduce you to five amazing African
entrepreneurs who are building successful businesses in the waste recycling
business. They are the young men and women who are creating jobs, building
wealth and saving Africa’s natural environment. Let’s meet them…
1. Bilikiss Adebiyi Abiola – Wecyclers,
Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city of over 16 million
people, produces up to 10,000 metric tons of waste every day. And much of this
waste is not collected. This uncollected waste leads to clogged waterways and
unsightly heaps of trash that often line the streets.
Bilikiss is the CEO and co-founder of Wecyclers, a for-profit
social enterprise working to help communities reclaim their neighborhoods from
unmanaged waste. Founded in 2012, Wecyclers uses low-cost cargo bicycles called
“wecycles” to provide convenient recycling services to households in Lagos by using
an SMS-based incentives system.
Bilikiss developed the business idea as an MBA student in
the USA, after a five-year career as a corporate software engineer at the IBM
Corporation. She left her corporate job and decided to focus on the waste
business.
Bilikiss sees huge potential in this sector, with Nigeria’s
recycling plants hungry for recycled waste materials due to local and foreign
demand for end products.
Her work with waste in Nigeria has attracted quite a lot of
local and global attention. She has been featured on CNN and The Huffington
Post among others. She is also a Fellow of the Echoing Green Foundation and a
2013 Laureate of the Cartier Women’s Initiative.
Bilikiss is a graduate of Fisk University, Vanderbilt
University, and MIT’s Sloan School of Management in the USA. She is now
based in Lagos full time.
2. Thato Kgatlhanye & Rea Ngwane –
Repurpose School bags, South Africa
Thato and Rea are just 21 and 22 years old respectively.
They both founded Repurpose
School bags as a green initiative to help hundreds of school children in
their local community in South Africa.
Their idea provides recycled and
low-cost school bags with an interesting twist.
Their young business collects and recycles plastic waste
into school bags for local disadvantaged students. But that’s not just it.
These “upcycled” plastic bags have a solar panel in the flap, which charges as
the children walk to and back from school. The bags also have strips of
reflective material, an added safety design to make the children more visible
to traffic in the early hours.
The charged solar panels are used to provide lighting at
night. Students can use this light to do their homework and study instead of
using candles. This helps students to do more school work and saves money which
could have been spent on candles.
Thato and Rea have partnered with local individuals and
organisations that are willing to cover the cost of the bags on behalf of the
students. Depending on their donation, these so-called “giving partners” are
typically matched to a class, a grade or a school.
This simple but highly effective idea has attracted quite a
lot of attention. Thato and Rea have been featured on several local and
international media. In 2014, they were the first runner-up at the Anzisha
Prize, a pan-African award celebrating entrepreneurs aged 15-22 who have
come up with innovative ways to solve problems in their communities.
3. Andrew Mupuya – YELI, Uganda
Andrew Mupuya was just 16 years old when he founded YELI,
Uganda’s first paper bag production company. He got the idea to start this
business in 2008, when the Ugandan government put a ban on the use of plastic
bags in order to reduce the environmental damage it was causing.
He was still in secondary school at the time and both of his
parents had lost their jobs. He didn’t have any capital. To start the paper
production business on a small scale, Andrew figured out he needed about 36,000
Ugandan shillings ($14). He raised $11 from selling 70 kilos of used plastic
bottles and then borrowed the remaining $3 from his school teacher.
While gathering capital, Andrew visited local shops, kiosks
and businesses to find out if there was any real demand for paper bags. The
potential was, and still remains, huge. He also didn’t know how to make paper
bags. So, he got on the internet and watched videos. That’s how he learned to
make paper bags.
Today, the business has grown quite dramatically. Andrew’s
paper bag company now employs over 20 people and produces more than 20,000
paper bags every week. All the bags are produced by hand as Andrew cannot yet
afford a machine.
His long list of clients includes restaurants, retail
stores, supermarkets, medical centers, as well as multinational companies like
Samsung. His company, YELI, has made about 1,000 niche bags for the local
stores of the electronics company.
In 2012, Andrew won the $30,000
Anzisha Prize, a major award given to young African entrepreneurial leaders
who take the initiative to address critical needs in their communities. He has
also been featured on CNN, Forbes and How We Made It In Africa.
4. Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu – soleRebels, Ethiopia
Bethlehem grew up in Zenabwork, a poor village in the
suburbs of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Today, she’s the founder and owner of
soleRebels, the most popular and fastest-growing African footwear brand in the
world!
SoleRebels’ footwear is unique because it is 100 percent
made by hand using locally-sourced and recycled materials like old car tyres,
discarded clothes and hand-loomed organic fabrics. She uses experienced and
highly-skilled local craftsmen to transform these recycled products into
world-class footwear products.
Her eco-friendly brand of footwear now sells in more than 50
countries around the world, including the USA, Canada, Japan and Switzerland.
A few years ago, soleRebels became the first footwear
company in the world to be certified by the World Fair Trade Organisation. By
using local craftsmen, Bethlehem has built a global brand and a hugely
successful business that has created jobs and improved livelihoods in her local
community.
Bethlehem started SoleRebels in 2004 with less than $10,000
in capital she raised from family and friends. Today, the company has more than
100 employees and nearly 200 local raw material suppliers, and has opened
several standalone retail outlets in North America, Europe and Asia.
Bethlehem was selected as the Young Global Leader of the
Year 2011 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was a winner
at the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship in the same year. Bethlehem and her
inspiring success story with SoleRebels have been featured several times on
Forbes, the BBC and CNN.
5. Lorna Rutto – EcoPost, Kenya
Lorna Rutto left her bank job in 2009 to start EcoPost, one
of Kenya’s biggest plastic recycling businesses. Her business recycles plastic
waste, which is collected from dumpsites and garbage cans across Nairobi, to
manufacture fencing posts. These posts, which are used to fence houses and
forest reserves, are fast becoming a preferred alternative to timber.
So far, Lorna’s innovative business has produced over 10,000
fencing posts, created more than 500 jobs, and generated more than $150,000 in
yearly revenues. Better still, her plastic recycling idea has saved over 250
acres of forests which would have been destroyed to produce wood for building
and construction needs in Kenya.
She recently upgraded to a larger and better-equipped
factory compared to the one in the video below. Lorna’s business has also
attracted a lot of worthy attention. She has won several awards including the
Sub-Saharan Africa Cartier Laureate, the Bid Network Nature Challenge Award,
the SEED Award and the Enablis Business Award.
Credited to John-Paul Iwuoha
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