Finalists named in £1m prize to tackle plastic pollution in Africa
A project in Nigeria that turns plastic pollution into designer textiles and accessories, buy-back schemes to help women and young people earn money through recycling, and a project that turns plastic waste into school benches in Rwanda are finalists in the running to win £1m in the first strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge.
Other innovations in contention for the Accelerating Growth strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge are:
- Mega Gas Alternative Energy in Kenya which uses a thermal cracking process to convert plastic trash into clean cooking gas for people living on less than a dollar a day;
- A scalable community recycling programme from Chaint Afrique Academy on the shores of Lake Volta in Ghana to prevent waste entering the marine ecosystem; and
- The Full Development Agency in the city of Bukavu, DR Congo, creating building materials from plastic waste to improve the urban environment.
Other African innovations in contention for the prize include an enterprise in Côte d'Ivoire that empowers households to set up small businesses collecting recyclable waste from their communities; companies in South Africa and Ghana producing durable house bricks from recycled plastic; and an end-to-end plastics management company in Togo that collects, sorts, cleans and shreds plastics before they are recycled into new products.
The Afri-Plastics Challenge is awarding approximately £8m to innovators in sub-Saharan Africa across three prize strands to tackle plastic pollution, reduce plastic consumption and shift attitudes towards the circular economy. It is funded by the Government of Canada and delivered by London-based innovation foundation, Nesta Challenges.
The 15 finalists have been selected from 30 semi-finalist teams announced in November 2021. Each received grants of £10,000 to grow their ideas and demonstrate their scalability. They will now receive a further £100,000 each to advance their solutions to plastic waste management.
From these 15, three winners will be announced in March 2023. Second place will be awarded £750,000 and third place will be awarded £500,000
Constance Agyeman, Director of International Development, Nesta Challenges said: “The solutions to Africa’s ever-increasing struggle with managing the rising tide of plastic pollution are already out there, but they need the right backing to grow. The Afri-Plastics Challenge is supporting the most promising sub-Saharan African innovators to refine and scale local ideas to have impact on the continent.”
To find out more about the 15 Accelerating Growth finalists and the 25 Creating Solutions semi-finalists and to follow their progress, visit afri-plastics.challenges.org