The Afri-Plastics Challenge is now in the home stretch as 15 finalists battle it out for the three prizes in the third strand of the challenge named Promoting Change.
The finalists have come up with innovative solutions that can help tackle the problem of plastic waste through gamification, storytelling, and incentives-based solutions are among the key innovations
With their eyes fixed on the prize, three winning projects will be awarded £250 000 each in March 2023. Finalists were drawn from Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda. And how did they make the cut? Their ideas were evaluated by a Judging Panel of experts against criteria such as innovation, empowerment of women and girls, social impact in the community, environmental impact and the applicants’ capability to achieve success.
They did not disappoint. Those to be feted include Botswana’s Meeticks Africa, whose solution “Change at the Till” runs a 30-day challenge that aims to get users to gain knowledge on how their use of single-use plastics, especially when shopping, negatively affects the environment and contributes heavily to marine plastic waste, and to practice what they learn. The solution is a multi-day gamified experience conducted over an intelligent WhatsApp chatbot and backend app.
Also lined up for the accolades is Catharina Natang from Cameroon, whose Training-Empowerment-Promotion (TEP) model aims to provide training on sustainable fashion and resource mobilisation to fashion designers and equip local designers to understand the subtle but massive presence of plastic-based fabrics in the fashion industry, and how this contributes to the global plastic waste problem. Students will learn about innovative non-plastic alternatives that are in existence and how to access them, and also how to recycle, properly dispose of and select non-plastic alternatives. The icing on the cake will be the organisation of annual sustainable fashion events to widen public awareness on sustainable fashion to reduce plastic wastes that end up in oceans.
Tackling plastic pollution through three prize strands, the finalists in the third strand – Promoting Change – announced today are being supported to develop innovative engagement strategies such as gamification, incentives and storytelling to promote behaviour change and educate communities, as well as provide insights into the roles that women and girls play across the value chain. The marine plastic pollution issue is growing and we need to ensure that awareness translates into action and long-term behaviour change, at both individual and collective levels. To help the finalists achieve this, they will be further supported through a capacity-building portfolio of subject matter experts over the next several months to further develop their solution.