NIGERIA: Recycling waste ensures schooling for the needy

With 22 million people in Nigeria illiterate, financial professionals through the Association of Certified and Chartered Accountants (ACCA), are launching the "Recycling for Education Campaign". The three-month initiative will provide schooling for vulnerable children through the financing of waste recycling in the West African country.

In its 2022 report entitled “Accounting for a Better World”, the Association of Certified and Chartered Accountants (ACCA) highlights education as one of the seven priorities for accelerating sustainable development in Africa. It is in this context that its team in Nigeria has initiated the “Recycling Campaign for Education”. The main objective of this operation is to provide schooling for vulnerable children through the financing of waste recycling.

The initiative, which will run from July to September 2022 in all Nigerian states, will be implemented with partners such as the FlexiSAF Foundation, which specialises in education, and Waste Africa, an organisation specialising in waste management in Africa. The FlexiSAF Foundation led by Amina Abubakar is providing the platform for the implementation of this project through its Bottle4Books initiative which combines education and sanitation.

“The collaboration will raise awareness of recycling and its positive impact on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Nigeria,” says Tom Isibor, ACCA’s Country Manager in Nigeria. These include SDGs 4 and 12, which call for quality education and sustainable production and consumption, respectively. In this West African country, many economic actors are multiplying initiatives aimed at improving waste management.

Recycling plastic waste

Nigeria produces 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year, two-thirds of which ends up in landfills, according to the Global Partnership for Action on Plastics (GPAP). Against this backdrop, US soft drinks company Coca-Cola and the Nigeria Climate Innovation Centre (NCIC) have joined forces to recycle about 9,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year in six Nigerian states.

In addition to this initiative, the start-up Kaltani, founded by engineer Obi Charles Nnanna, will install 20 plastic waste collection units in 10 Nigerian states to expand recycling at its main plant in Lagos. The project will be implemented thanks to a $4 million fundraising that the start-up completed in May 2022, and will recycle up to 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year.

 Benoit-Ivan Wansi | https://www.afrik21.africa/