Spurring Africa's transformation towards a circular economy
Bonmwa Fwangkwal is a Program Manager for the Secretariat of the African Circular Economy Alliance (ACEA). Her vision is to see circular economy models that are prevalent on the African continent scaled up to meet the developmental needs of the continent. This vision translates into her role of supporting African countries to implement ACEA's mandate. This includes policy support and advisory, support for scaling circular economy businesses, and advocacy and awareness creation of the circular economy across the African continent.
The African Circular Economy Alliance was conceived in 2016 during the World Economy Forum on Africa in Kigali and formally launched at the COP23 in Bonn in 2018. ACEA is a government-led coalition of African nations with a mission to spur Africa's transformation into a circular economy that delivers economic growth, jobs and positive environmental outcomes.
In the face of growing global concerns regarding biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change, the circular economy concept has emerged as an alternative model for sustainable production and consumption. It promotes the conservation of finite resources while preserving the environment, and presents opportunities for economic development, job creation, industrialization and innovation. For African countries, circular solutions can be leveraged to attain various climate action obligations and sustainable development goals. This is an opportunity to tackle issues such as poverty, poor infrastructure and unemployment, among others, that have long hindered economic development on the continent.
Within ACEA, Bonmwa and her team have identified five opportunity areas that will help push for the transition of Africa towards a circular economy development model-one that enables economic growth, job creation and environmental conservation. These areas include food systems, packaging, the built environment, fashion and textiles, and electronics. Along these thematic areas, we have defined interventions for supporting specific industries that offer immediate opportunities for increased circularity in sectors that will improve the economy, jobs and the environment on the continent in the long term. These include:
- Food systems: Converting food waste into organic fertilizer to increase circularity in food systems.
- Packaging: Recycling plastic packaging to increase circularity within the packaging industry.
- Electronics: Promoting circularity in the large and growing electronics sector through substantial recycling and collection facilities.
- Fashion and textiles: Converting textile waste into garments for commercial export markets.
- Built environment: Redesigning how we build by using mass timber instead of conventional concrete as a more sustainable input resource for expanding the built environment.
For Bonmwa, the end goal with these industries is to "provide a platform to strengthen and scale up initiatives, while creating opportunities for new investments, de-risking capital flows, and enhancing skills and technology transfer".
ACEA was founded by Rwanda, Nigeria and South Africa, which together currently serve as co-chairs. The other member countries of ACEA are currently Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso and Sudan. ACEA is supported by strategic partners such as the World Economic Forum, the African Development Bank, the UN Environment Programme, the Government of Finland, and the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economic. The ACEA Secretariat is hosted at the African Development Bank, with support from the World Economic Forum and the Danish International Development Agency.