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This collection is part of Footprints Africa's work to build a comprehensive database of circular economy initiatives in Africa. 

This is a result of the collaboration with the <a href="https://www.acen.africa" target="_blank">African Circular Economy Network (ACEN)</a>, as part of the programme to support the circular economy transition in Africa. Footprints Africa's vision is that businesses can be a force for good at scale. Their mission is to advance sustainable, scalable and inclusive approaches to development of local African economies. Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, such as those inspired by the circular economy, to address the challenges of growth and create jobs. 

This open-source dataset features well over 500 cases and 200 examples of policies and laws and intent to collect inspiring examples of initiatives from across Africa, in order to inform the global dialogue, which is largely focused on the European and American context. 

To learn more about Africa's initiatives and content to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, visit https://www.footprintsafrica.co/



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Footprints Africa

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Business case

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Providing water and sewage services, including water collection and distribution, water treatment systems and sewage treatment facilities

Water and Sewage

Collecting waste from households and businesses by means of refuse bins, wheeled bins, containers, etc., and providing treatment, incineration, materials recovery and reclamation, and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste

Waste Management

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Consider opportunities to create greater value and align incentives that build on the interaction between products and services

Rethink the business model

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Amsterdam, October 19th, 2020 – Safi Sana is an innovative enterprise that provides unique solutions for sanitation and waste recycling in low income countries. By using waste as a resource to produce energy, organic fertilizer and irrigation water, our circular model … Continue reading 
Sonia Folikumah, Safi’s Seedling and Fertilizer Plant Coordinator, is an agronomist with a passion for improving Ghana’s agricultural sector. She talks to us about her professional background and what she finds most motivating about her day-to-day work. Becoming an agronomist … Continue reading 
On Friday 13th July, Safi Sana Ghana was pleased to host a visit for the Container-Based Sanitation Alliance. Representatives from Sanergy, SOIL, Sanivation and Loowatt were given a tour of Safi Sana’s factory and facilities in Ashaiman and took part … Continue reading 


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Africa

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Accra

Ghana

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Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, address the challenges of growth and create jobs, using supply chains as a tool for development. 

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The vision of the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) is to build a restorative African economy that generates well-being and prosperity inclusive of all its people through new forms of economic production and consumption which maintain and regenerate its environmental resources.

African Circular Economy Network

Safisana designs and operates systems that take market waste and sewage to produce electricity, compost, irrigation water and seedlings.

Safi Sana 

<p>Safisana designs and operates systems that use market waste and sewage to produce electricity, compost, irrigation water and seedlings. The company combines organic waste from food markets and abattoirs with faecal matter from urban slums to produce biogas, soil conditioner and water for irrigation. They have their own organic fertiliser brand, ‘Asaase Gyefo’ (‘Soil Saviour’), which they both sell and use to propagate seedlings. A significant portion of their revenue comes from selling electricity generated from captured methane to Ghana’s national power company.</p>