Abstract
Africa’s urbanization processes are seen as both a challenge and an opportunity for sustainable development. While these processes unfold differently in diverse countries across the continent, it has become increasingly apparent that surge urbanization, population growth and the lack of effective planning for an efficient waste management system have brought in its wake other challenges that have significant implications for public health and sustainable development. Thus, much as urbanization has the potential to drive Africa’s growth and sustainable development agenda, current happenings in most of Africa’s cities, in particular, also signal the negative impact of rapid and unplanned urbanization on sustainable development processes. Waste and sanitation management have become an enduring urban challenge across Africa. They come with significant cost to people and governments and as the search for lasting solutions continue, Waste Transfer Stations have emerged as an efficient management technology which has been embraced and deployed in some countries. While it has received praises in some quarters as an innovative technology, there is concern that such praises have muted critical issues of pollution, odor nuisance, cultural incompatibility and public health challenges, which, for the most part, are unrecognized or underestimated. The question then becomes: are Waste Transfer Stations the solution to Africa’s urban waste and sanitation challenges?
Highlights
Waste Transfer stations have been deployed in many cities and urban communities around the world as an efficient mobility facility for solid waste management (Christensen, 2010; Zhao, Lu, & Wang, 2015;)
In the last few years, the concept has been embraced by many African countries as it has very quickly found its way into countries such as Ghana and Nigeria where they have been adopted and deployed as an additional avenue to address the growing urban waste management and sanitation challenges (Oteng-Ababio et al, 2013; Simelane & Romeela, 2015; Remigios, 2010)
The long haulage distances are further complicated by traffic delays due to the existing culture of city traffic gridlock and paralysis, a situation, which characterizes most cities and town across Africa (Kibunja, 2009). This situation has very much affected waste collection frequencies and efficiencies in cities; it explains the unsightly spectacles of litter and heaps of uncollected garbage on streets and in communities. It is the situation, which has motivated the introduction of Waste Transfer stations in cities like Accra and Lagos to serve as an avenue to get around this collection and transportation problem
Summary
Waste Transfer stations have been deployed in many cities and urban communities around the world as an efficient mobility facility for solid waste management (Christensen, 2010; Zhao, Lu, & Wang, 2015;). Using the city of Accra, the capital of Ghana and located within the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) as referenced above, the paper first locates Africa’s waste and sanitation challenges in the broader context of urban development and as a way of clarifying how urban population growth and a lack of forward-looking planning culture have contributed to the current situation in many urbanized communities across Africa. This will be followed by a discussion on the suitability of transfer stations as a technology to address Africa’s urban waste management challenges. The principal organizing question for this paper is: Do waste transfer station provide the required solutions for Africa’s waste and sanitation challenges?
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