- At the Afri-Plastics competition on sustainable plastic waste management, which was sponsored by the Canadian government and managed by the British foundation Nesta Challenges, Green Industrial Plast (GIP) Togo took first place.
- The Lomé-based start-up will share a £4.1 million ($5.2 million) prize with seven other winners from Rwanda, Nigeria, Cameroon and Kenya.
The British nonprofit Nesta Challenges’ Afri-Plastics competition will honor eight African start-ups in 2023 for their innovative approaches to recovering plastic waste. Examples include Chanja Datti, established in Nigeria, and the mobile app “Toto Saffi,” which provides Rwandan parents with reusable diapers for infants. The business founded by Funto Boroffice works with factories in Abuja to repurpose domestic waste and combat waste pollution in the Nigerian capital.
But, the Green Industry Plast (GIP) initiative, which is establishing plastic waste collection and sorting units in Togo’s major communities, was the one that most caught the Afri-Plastics jury’s attention.
Notable winners include Kenyan startup Mega Gas Alternative Energy, which also won the Start Up Energy Transition Award for the seventh cohort (SET Award). As an alternative to charcoal and firewood, whose combustion increases air pollution, the clean cooking firm transforms Nairobi’s garbage into biogas.
There is also the Congolese business RD Full Development Agency (FDA), which has vowed to educate the populace of Bukavu about the massive plastic pollution of Lake Kivu. Collectively, the eight winners of the third Afri-Plastics competition will get financial support from the Canadian government worth a total of £4.1 million ($5.2 million) and technical assistance for the development of their ideas in sub-Saharan Africa.