Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau have called for stronger laws, institutions and sustainable financing to confront Africa’s growing waste-management crisis and accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
The call was made in Abuja at the Final Regional Closing Workshop of the ‘Environmentally Sounder and Safer Waste Management Frameworks in Africa’ project, which brought together policymakers, regulators, development partners and representatives of participating countries to review the project’s findings and agree on pathways for implementation.
Hosted by the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), the workshop was held under a United Nations Development Account (UNDA)-funded initiative led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in collaboration with other UN agencies.
The project, which covered Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, was designed to strengthen national and regional systems for environmentally sound and safer waste management.
Speaking at the workshop, NESREA Director-General, Professor Innocent Barikor, said Africa could no longer afford to treat waste management as a peripheral environmental issue, given its implications for development and public wellbeing.
He said the workshop provided an opportunity to validate the project’s findings, legislative proposals and recommendations, while developing practical roadmaps for implementation, resource mobilisation and sustainability beyond the project’s closure.
According to Barikor, inadequate infrastructure, insufficient funding and limited public awareness remained major obstacles to effective waste management across many African countries.
He said the project recommendations would help strengthen legislative and institutional frameworks while promoting the inclusion and protection of informal waste workers.
‘Together we shall produce a set of concrete post-project implementation and sustainability roadmaps that will inform policy and legislative reforms, strengthen institutional capacity, ensure gender inclusion, protect the rights of children and improve overall waste management outcomes,’ he said.
The NESREA boss said the initiative was consistent with Nigeria’s drive towards a circular economy and resource efficiency, stressing that improved waste management could deliver economic, social and environmental benefits simultaneously.
He urged participants to ensure that the project’s recommendations translated into concrete and sustainable actions rather than remaining policy proposals.
Representing the Government of Sierra Leone, Deputy Minister of Environment, Mrs Yeama-Mimi Sobba-Stephens, said the workshop provided an opportunity to assess the project’s achievements and determine how the gains could be sustained after its formal conclusion.
She commended UNEP for its technical leadership and support, as well as the Nigerian Government and NESREA for hosting the regional event.
The Deputy Minister said the project was particularly relevant to Sierra Leone, where rapid urbanisation, population growth, changing consumption patterns and inadequate infrastructure were putting increasing pressure on waste-management services in Freetown and other growing municipalities.
She said the initiative had enabled Sierra Leone to examine waste management as part of an integrated waste-governance system.
According to her, the country had identified the need for a comprehensive and harmonised legal framework covering the entire waste hierarchy – prevention, reduction, reuse, recycling, recovery and environmentally sound disposal as a last resort.
She said this approach would help shift African countries from systems largely centred on waste collection and dumping towards circular economies in which materials could remain in productive use for as long as possible.
Sobba-Stephens also highlighted the role of informal waste workers in collection, sorting, recycling and maintaining community cleanliness.
However, she noted that many of the workers continued to operate without adequate recognition, occupational health and safety protection, social protection and appropriate equipment.
She called on UNEP and regional partners to sustain technical exchanges, peer learning and resource mobilisation to support implementation of the project’s recommendations.
Also speaking, Legal Specialist, UNEP Law Division, Valentina Ricca, said the initiative was designed to help participating countries strengthen their waste-management systems and address challenges confronting informal workers.
Ricca said the project began in 2023 and was being concluded this year, adding that it was implemented by UNEP’s Law Division in partnership with the UN-Habitat waste-management team, with a focus on Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
She explained that the initiative was developed in response to requests from the three countries through their national focal points under UNEP’s Fifth Montevideo Environmental Law Programme.
The project’s recommendations are expected to provide a basis for participating countries to strengthen their legal and institutional systems, improve protection for waste workers and build more sustainable approaches to managing waste across the region.