Faced with the increase in waste volumes, our communities are struggling to find effective solutions for the collection and treatment of this waste.
To deal with this accumulation and the question of financing, the Congolese government has launched a sanitation and waste management project in the city of Lubumbashi.
The Problem
Considering that the environmental landscape of the city of Lubumbashi is marked by the presence in several places:
- Large volumes of refuse, particularly at public markets;
- Wild dumping of waste of any kind on the ground;
- Waterways flooded with non-degradable waste;
Which are created on one hand, by the population whose number of inhabitants (more or less eight million) is still growing exponentially and, on the other hand, by large, small and medium-sized companies and industries in continuous growth :
Considering that in the face of such an unhealthy setting, the physical, mental and social health of the population becomes compromised and poses a thorny problem for the Urban Authorities who, at different times, have tried to restore the health of the City without succeeding, because faced by major obstacles related to the very limited means of rolling stock, adequate equipment and insufficient financial possibilities, given the vastness of the City (747 Km2), ie 7 times the area of Paris 105Km2;
The Solution
On basis of the data extracted from the Phase I’s diagnostic report, it seems urgent to organize a management of household waste, the so-called common ones, in order to avoid reaching a critical state.
However, it is illusory to envisage the establishment of a complex and formal waste management structure in the short term.
The high proportion of recyclable waste production will make it possible to envisage a type of industrial recycling installed outside the socio-economic territory in order to preserve its viability, which is absolutely of capital importance. All sustainable household waste management systems depend as much on the strategies of actors as on techniques.


