General
Source: the Guardian
As the most populous city in Africa, life in Lagos can present a number of urban challenges. Since 2004, Nigeria has seen a 5% increase in the number of people living below $1 per day, despite recently overtaking South Africa as the continent's largest economy.
Of Lagos's 18 million residents, 60% live in slum neighbourhoods that operate as informal, thriving cities of their own. But Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola, a born-and-raised Lagosian, has a plan to reconnect citizens to the megacity by linking them to out-of-reach municipal services, while also building a network through which community resilience can flourish.
Having moved to the US to further her education, Bilikiss frequently returned to Nigeria to visit family during her time off. "Going home, I noticed such a stark contrast in quality of life," she tells me over Skype. "I was really awoken by this". While enrolled on the MBA programme at MIT, Bilikiss submitted the bones of what is now her business as a one page assignment. But after discussing the idea with classmates, she felt that she was on to something, and that something turned out to be a necessity for people living in low-income areas of her hometown.
The student project quickly evolved to become Wecyclers, a social enterprise that works with low-income households using an incentive-based model to tackle the city's widespread waste problems. Here's how it works: households sign up to the service and separate their recyclable items ahead of a weekly collection by the Wecyclers team, who zip around the city on a fleet of cargo-bikes. Participating households receive points for every kilogram recycled, which can be redeemed for electronics, household items, training classes and even money. In turn, the waste is then sold to recycling plants who shred it to make products such as mattress and pillow stuffing.
Trash is currency, and one that's in every city
"Waste is currently a big problem for people living in poor conditions, but I want to turn it into a solution," Bilikiss says. The city's waste collection system currently requires citizens to pay a fee for the service based on the size of their home – a charge that many are unable to afford, and so rubbish is left on the streets or burned. "Even when people do want trash collected, the road network is too challenging," she explains. "People park, double park, even triple park. It's impossible for vehicles to get to it."
As a result, only 40% of the city's waste is collected and only 13% is recycled each year. The rest of it sits on the streets, increasing the spread of diseases and clogging up drains which can lead to flooding. But, simultaneously, recycling plants in Lagos lack an adequate supply of recyclable materials for processing. Bilikiss is providing the missing link.
"It's literally money just lying in the streets": she estimates that metal and plastic waste in Lagos is worth around $700mn. By deploying a fleet of low-cost, environmentally friendly bikes into the narrow streets and alleys of the city's slum neighbourhoods, Wecyclers can reach the rubbish that the municipal waste collectors are unable to get to.
Since launching two years ago, Wecyclers has employed over 80 Lagosians, from cargo-bike collectors to waste sorters, who have cleared over 525 tons of waste from the streets and connected over 6,500 households to the service. "Now, we've noticed that we've stopped actively reaching out to households to register people as more and more are coming directly to us. They want to be part of the movement," Bilikiss says. "People see their friends getting rewards for clearing up, and they want the same thing. The incentive is there and people are really keen to do it."
But Bilikiss has much grander plans. She proudly tells me that her model could potentially create 500,000 direct and indirect jobs across the country. "But to start with, I'd like to have at least 1 million homes signed up in Lagos." The initial funding of the project has come from bootstrapping, and now the organisation is gaining international recognition for their work in Lagos. DHL donated a van last year, Unilever have provided sponsorship for Wecyclers to collect their packaging, and the project recently won $55,000 through the Pitch for Lagos start-up event. This will enable Bilikiss to expand the enterprise's reach into other parts of Lagos, across Nigeria and then the continent – her "ultimate dream".
"The story of Lagos is applicable to almost any city in sub-saharan Africa. Trash is currency, and one that's in every city. It's a resource, and we've found a way to tap into that for those who need it the most," she says. Still, there remain many barriers to overcome before this expansion can take place. "We're trying to do something new in one of the most challenging places that you could ever do anything," Bilikiss explains. "The government has good intentions, but they're overwhelmed by too many people and no money to do what they want to do ... And that, paired with dishonesty and corruption – well, you have to constantly out-smart people who are trying to out-smart you."
So far, the enterprise has felt a few tugs from the state level. Since demonstrating its success in nimbly collecting waste from the harder-to-reach streets of Lagos, Wecyclers has partnered with the Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) to ramp up the city's collection services. With an estimated population growth of over 600,000 people per year in Lagos, Bilikiss is working hard to scale up her project to deal with the inevitable increase in waste – plastic consumption in the city is anticipated to grow from around 750,000 tonnes to 1.9 million tonnes in the next 10 years.
"We've come a very long way and I'm proud and grateful for the people who have helped shape the project," she says. Through encouraging people to transform trash to cash, Wecyclers has in turn empowered citizens to work together to take pride in their neighbourhoods, and has helped some smaller businesses get off the ground too.
As the three-wheeled cargo bikes manoeuvre their way through the hectic streets of Lagos, they create a network of communities working together to address issues of health, wellbeing and urban resilience in Africa's largest city. By placing an otherwise out-of-reach municipal service into the hands of citizens, Bilikiss has created a simple, open and accessible model of income for those living and working in the informal setting of the slums. This is a low-tech but high-impact solution, and it works from the ground up – literally.