After months of preparation for their pitches, the nine winners from across sub-Saharan Africa of the Afri-Plastics Challenge have been announced at the Afri-Plastics Summit and Awards in Nairobi! In partnership with the Government of Canada and Challenge Works, today the Challenge awards £4.1 million (CA$6.7 million) to innovators with scalable innovations that tackle plastic waste and reduce the volume of pollution making its way to the ocean.

Strand 1 teams have existing solutions that are improving plastic waste management in a socially and environmentally responsible way, to reduce the presence of marine plastic litter across Sub-Saharan Africa. These solutions demonstrated an effective, sustainable and replicable model for significantly increasing their collection and processing of plastic waste, as well as the empowerment of women and girls.

Strand 2 teams work on the development of early-stage products, technology and/or services to encourage the reduction or elimination of plastic usage across Sub-Saharan Africa. Their solutions demonstrated a sustainable approach to reducing the reliance on plastic that also supports the empowerment of women and girls.

Strand 3 teams created campaigns, schemes, tools and other creative interventions that will change both the behaviour of individuals and communities around plastic waste in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as contribute to the empowerment of women and girls.

And the winners are…

Veuillez visiter cette page pour le texte en français. Please visit this page for the text in French.

Ahead of the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) held in the Egyptian city of Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Global Centre on Adaptation (GCA) launched a report that painted a bleak future on the funding for climate adaptation in Africa. According to the report, State and Trends in Adaptation in Africa 2022, launched on 3 November 2022, Africa is facing a critical shortfall in funding for climate adaptation and that cumulative adaptation finance to 2030 will come to less than one-quarter of the estimated needs stated by African countries in their National Determined Contributions (NDCs), unless more funding for climate adaptation is secured.

The report reveals that in 2019 and 2020 an estimated $11.4 billion was committed to climate adaptation finance in Africa with more than 97% of the funds coming from public actors and less than 3% from private sectors. This is significantly less than the $52.7 billion annually to 2030 it is estimated African countries will need.

Positive outcomes rekindle hopes for Africa countries

But some of the commitments made at COP27 have rekindled hopes for a number of African countries. Key among these was the launch of the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda that outlines 30 adaptation outcomes to enhance resilience for 4 billion people living in the most climate vulnerable communities by 2030. Each outcome presents global solutions that can be adopted at a local level to respond to local climate contexts, needs and risks and deliver the systems transformation required to protect vulnerable communities to the rising climate hazards, such as extreme heat, drought, flooding, or extreme weather.

Together, these outcomes represent the first comprehensive global plan to rally both State and non-State actors behind a shared set of adaptation actions that are required by the end of this decade across five impact systems: food and agriculture, water and nature, coastal and oceans, human settlements, and infrastructure, and including enabling solutions for planning and finance.

The 30 adaptation outcomes include urgent global targets related to, among others, transitioning to climate resilient, sustainable agriculture that can increase yields by 17% and reduce farm level greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 21%, without expanding agricultural frontiers. 

We are acutely aware of the fact that climate change poses new challenges to the fight against poverty and sustainability of agrarian livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, causing considerable crop yield losses thereby adversely affecting smallholder livelihoods in Africa. This challenge can be addressed through the adoption of climate smart agriculture. Innovation can provide an opportunity for agriculture producers to increase productivity while better managing natural resources. This helps to ensure long-term viability and reduce the negative environmental impacts of production, such as pollutants and waste. This is why we at Challenge Works have created  the  ‘Cultivating the Drylands Prize’ challenge, a new prize to accelerate innovative agricultural technologies and practices to support more resilient, intelligent approaches to farming in arid conditions.

It is commendable that focus is being shifted to Africa and at Challenge Works, we welcome the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda as it also addresses Ocean and Coastal Systems. This is in tandem with Afri-Plastics Challenge, the challenge we are currently running to help communities throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to prevent plastic waste from entering the oceans by finding ways to minimize reliance on plastic and new ways of managing plastic waste.

More adaptation funds on the way

Another crucial outcome is the commitment by the US to double its Adaptation Fund Pledge, as part of the US Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), that accelerates adaptation in Africa. This includes funds to the African Union’s flagship Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI), which is hosted by the Egyptian government, to launch the AAI Food Security Accelerator, which will dramatically speed- and scale-up private sector investments in climate resilient food security in Africa. The United Kingdom (UK) also announced a significant increase in its financial support to the poorest African countries that bear the brunt of climate change. The £200 million was channelled to the African Development Bank Group’s Climate Action Window. It will also launch a new Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership and confirm more than £150m for protecting rainforests and natural habitats, including the Congo Basin and Amazon.

In addition, the UK committed £65.5 million to support green investment projects, including new and expanded solar and geothermal power plants in Kenya, as well as financial support for Egypt’s flagship COP27 initiative, the ‘Nexus on Food, Water and Energy’. The funding will develop projects including solar parks and energy storage innovations, and is expected to mobilise billions in private sector finance.

Also noteworthy is the announcement that Kenya, Egypt, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania are among the countries that will be collectively receiving more than US$350 million fundraised by Italy, the United Kingdom and Sweden. The funding from Nature, People and Climate Investment programme (NPC), a newly launched initiative by Climate Investment Fund (CIF), will focus on promoting and protecting natural environments integral to climate action, sustainable agriculture and food supply, healthy forests, resilient coastal systems and empowering indigenous people and local communities.

Youth voices now being heard

Above all, COP27 will go down in history as the first climate conference to emphasise that children and the youth are affected by climate change and their voices must therefore be heard. The COP27 Youth and Future Generation Day sought to ensure that young people be part of the conversation. This arose from the realization that the impacts of climate change have significant effects on the health, nutrition, education and the future of young people, while youth stands to be the most impacted by the decisions taken at the climate process.

 It is in this regard that the African Development Bank (AfDB) President Dr Akinwumi Adesina promised to fund a business plan by Kenya’s youngest delegate at COP27, 9-year-old Karen Wanjiru who would like to start a business to make biodegradable bottles.This is akin to the Mombasa Plastics Prize which builds on the work of the Afri-Plastics Challenge, funded by The Government of Canada, that is encouraging innovation and awareness among aspiring entrepreneurs and leaders in Mombasa County, by inspiring the development of solutions that tackle the problem of marine plastic waste mismanagement within informal settlements. 

It is evident from the foregoing that COP27 produced several outcomes whose timely implementation will go a long way in addressing adaptation and mitigation issues, especially in Africa. It is now time to move from rhetoric to action. To ensure increased adaptation financial flows to Africa, financial institutions must mainstream resilience into investments that they are making. But for this to happen, policy makers and other stakeholders must build an enabling environment for adaptation investment. 

The Afri-Plastics Challenge is now down to the wire. Ten teams of innovators from across sub-Saharan Africa have made it to the finals in strand 2 of the challenge named Creating Solutions, aimed at reducing plastic usage across the continent. The finalists will receive £75,000 to invest in and develop their ideas. Next year, a winner will take home a first prize of £750,000, with the runner up receiving £250,000 and third placed winning £100,000.

Across the continent lies a pool of innovative talent as exemplified by the regional distribution of the finalists, who were drawn from Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. They included a Rwandan organization Toto Safi, whose solution also named Toto Safi, is an app-based service that facilitates the reduction of single-use disposable diapers, a major source of land and marine pollution. Through this app, parents will be able to receive a fresh bundle of clean and sterilised cloth diapers at an affordable cost.

Also catching the judges’ eye and attention was ShoppersBag, a solution developed by a Nigerian organization known as Well of Science. Shoppersbags are re-usable, recyclable and biodegradable bags that allow people to get paid or earn rewards on every usage.  Other contenders in the race include South Africa’s Regenize. Regenize’s Zero-Waste Spaza can plug into any existing spaza shop and enables it to become a zero-waste shop where their customers can shop without creating plastic waste. The customers will need to bring their containers to purchase goods supplied by Regenize and stored in secured food-safe containers. Besides reducing plastic waste, it will also enable customers to live a healthier lifestyle.

What’s next for the finalists?

The finalists in the second strand announced today are also being supported by a bespoke capacity-building portfolio of experts innovation, commercialisation, narrative-building, plastics to develop their innovative products that specifically reduce or eliminate plastic entering the value chain through ingenious and novel approaches.

The successful community-centered products and services have demonstrated a sustainable approach to reducing the reliance on plastic that also supports the empowerment of women and girls. The Afri-Plastics Challenge’s goal is that the development of the innovators’ solutions will encourage the creation of new, sustainable local enterprises, bringing economic opportunity to communities, while creating solutions with application across sub-Saharan Africa and around the world.

Please visit this page for the text in French. Veuillez visiter cette page pour le texte en français. 

Time / Heure:

• 12pm BST (11am UTC, 12pm WAT, 1pm SAST, 2pm EAT)
•  12h00 BST (11h00 TU, 12h00 WAT, 13h00 SAST, 14h00 EAT)

Date:

• Thursday, 09 September 2021
• Le jeudi, 9 septembre 2021

This webinar was held on the 9th of September 2021. Organisations interested in participating in Strand 1, Accelerating Growth, of the Afri-Plastics Challenge had the opportunity to ask the project team questions ahead of the application deadline on the 15 September 2021.

Please note that this webinar was in English only. If you would like to ask a question in French please contact us at [email protected].

Ce webinaire a eu lieu le 9 septembre 2021. Les organisations intéressées à participer au volet 1, Accélérer la croissance, du défi Afri-Plastics ont posé des questions à l’équipe du projet avant la date limite de candidature (15 septembre 2021).

Veuillez noter que ce webinaire s’est fait anglais seulement. Si vous souhaitez poser une question en français, veuillez nous contacter à [email protected].

Plastic waste is a significant problem globally, but particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over 17 million tonnes of waste are generated by Sub-Saharan Africa annually; however, only 12% of plastic waste is recycled. The majority of plastic is either burned or dumped, with significant quantities entering rivers, streams and lakes and eventually making its way to the ocean.

Nesta Challenges, in partnership with the Government of Canada, is seeking new innovative solutions to help stop plastic pollution across sub-Saharan Africa. We are launching the CA$14.5 million Afri-Plastics Challenge. 

The Afri-Plastics Challenge is calling on entrepreneurs with scalable and sustainable solutions to prevent plastic waste from entering the marine environment within sub-Saharan Africa. The challenge will involve three strands of activity, with the first strand launching today.

The drive for home-grown innovation in Africa has attracted several global firms and tech hubs to the continent. There is also a major rise in African entrepreneurs developing solutions that are effective and contextual to their environments. We are looking for founders, innovators and entrepreneurs with exciting concepts to alleviate the negative impacts of marine pollution on the environment. 

Afri-Plastics Challenge’s first strand, Accelerating Growth, is encouraging entries from small and medium-sized enterprises with a proof of concept and the ability to scale nationally/regionally to reach a high target of people. From these applicants, 15 finalists and three winners will be selected.

Africa is slowly starting to recover from Covid-19, and innovation remains vital to economic growth, competitiveness and most importantly, health. SMEs can be a part of the solution because they are constantly innovating, pushing the boundaries of what is possible under much pressure and often with thin resources. We are convinced that African entrepreneurs have tangible solutions to meet the Afri-Plastics Challenge.

Promoting gender equality and women empowerment

The Afri-Plastics Challenge is open to all entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa and encourages solutions from women and girls in particular. The challenge places emphasis on promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa.

The challenge will help promote gender equality, first by supporting women innovators and second, fostering gender-responsive innovations. Applicants will be required to demonstrate how their solutions help advance gender equality. 

Additionally, the Afri-Plastics Challenge will help ensure local ownership and capacity building through partnership-building and collaboration between innovators and women and girls, local communities and households, and local organizations and enterprises.

Later in 2021, the second strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge – Creating Solutions – will call for new ideas, especially those that respond to a particular gap in the innovation landscape in specific countries or with specific population groups. Ten finalists and three winners will be selected. 

This will be followed by the third strand, Promoting Change, which will call for large-scale campaigns that raise awareness and engage women and girls in the plastics value chain. 15 finalists and three winners will be selected.

For more information on the criteria and application process, innovators should click here. Applicants can apply from anywhere in the world; however, they should have a link to an African innovator or SME. The deadline for applications to the first strand of the challenge will close on Wednesday 15 September 2021 at 1200 BST.