Reclaiming Reusable and Recyclable Materials in Africa

The sight of people rummaging through rubbish bins is ubiquitous in many African cities. Yet, aside from the well-documented and widely celebrated case of the zabbaleen in Egypt, Africa does not generally feature within current international debates on people who extract useful materials from the waste stream. Although a significant amount of research has, in fact, been conducted on this topic, to date there has not been a systematic effort to bring this literature together in order to distil key insights regarding the African experience. This paper seeks to redress this gap by reviewing literature on the reclamation of reusable and recyclable materials in Africa. It identifies key themes within the literature, critically reflects on the ways in
which research has been conducted, and identifies priorities for future research.

This literature review was commissioned by the research and advocacy network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). Since 2006 WIEGO has been working to help strengthen organising and networking amongst workers in the informal economy who reclaim reusable and recyclable material from what others have discarded as waste. This literature review is intended to help map existing knowledge on what
WIEGO refers to as ‘waste picking’ in Africa, and to inform WIEGO’s initiatives in this area. The review identifies and engages with a broad range of themes within the literature related to organising and policy issues. Over 90 documents were initially sourced, 58 of which were deemed to be of direct relevance to the review. The earliest reference dates back to De Kock’s 1986 study in which ‘garbage picking’ in Durban, South Africa is explored as part of broader shifts towards informal labour within the context of economic crisis (De Kock 1986). Although only two references, both by Tevera (Tevera 1993; Tevera 1994), were produced in the ensuing decade, a dozen were generated in the latter half of the 1990s. Since the turn
of the 21st century there has been a blossoming of research on reclaiming of reusable and recyclable materials across the continent, with the bulk of the literature being produced in this period.

Of the 58 references reviewed, 19 focus on South Africa, 13 on Egypt, five on Nigeria, four on Kenya, three on Zimbabwe and two on Mozambique. Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali, Tanzania and Zambia are each addressed in one reference. Six references deal with more than one country on the continent. The references reviewed include books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, undergraduate and postgraduate theses, internet publications and unpublished papers and reports. Whilst there is clearly a stronger scholarly interest in issues related to reclaiming reusable and recyclable materials in some countries, the uneven focus of the literature must also be attributed to the fact that the literature search was confined to English-language references. As such, the review does not benefit from or
draw on research written in Portuguese, French, Arabic and the numerous indigenous African languages spoken on the continent. Although the material includes studies that span the continent, there is a bias towards countries with English as the colonial language. Trends and themes identified must be qualified on this basis.