Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a plastic problem. Yet that artificial problem is causing natural calamities. Everywhere you go, plastic bottles and other household waste liter.
The city of more than 15 million inhabitants, according to World Bank estimates, produces around 10,000 tonnes of waste every day. Less than 20 percent is collected by the urban authorities, according to a recent study on waste management in DRC cities. The city produces thousands of plastic bottles, which are thrown away by users after use.
And amid rapid population growth, waste management has become a real headache. Officially, there has been a policy against single-use plastics in Kinshasa since 2021. Yet its implementation and lack of financial resources to deal with this problem have hampered it.
Unlike peers in East African Community (EAC) such as Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, the DRC has not banned officially some of these plastics. In Kinshasa, in 2021, a decree issued by the governor of Kinshasa-Gentiny Ngobila, banned the sale of plastic bags. It didn’t help.
It is not that plastics have been totally eliminated in other countries that banned single-use plastics. In fact, porous borders and corruption have often seen single-use plastics smuggled across borders all over the EAC. Kinshasa, however, has lacked on all fronts: political will, money and support.
The last external partner to agree to fund this service was the European Union (EU). Until 2015, the EU.
