In 2018, 40% of the Guinean population lives in urban areas and half of this population is concentrated in Conakry’s urban agglomeration (2.5 million inhabitants). Concomitantly with the growth of the population, the poor development of sanitation services has created significant issues in terms of solid waste management and public health & sanitation.
The Government, supported by the European Union (EU) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), has launched the professionalization of the solid waste sector stakeholders within the SANITA Villes Propres project. The consortium formed by ICEA and Espelia was selected by Enabel (Belgian cooperation agency which is entrusted with the implementation of the project) to prepare a capacity building plan. This plan aims at strengthening the stakeholders’ skills across Conakry’s 5 municipalities and the township of Kindia.
After completing the organizational diagnosis of each of the public stakeholders and meeting with a large number of SMEs active in the sector, our team organized three working days in Conakry, with about fifty representatives of the sector (16-8 April 2019). This mission resulted in the co-elaboration of the capacity-building plan’s groundwork, within a systemic and change management approach.
The various stakeholders, public and private, have thus worked together on the challenges to be met for the coming years, they also examined the necessary fields of progress to achieve the sector’s professionalization. The result is a five-year capacity-building plan built around six areas of improvement: (i) strategic planning and management, (ii) Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) management, (iii) monitoring of activities, (iv) awareness and prevention, (v) organization and management of public waste management companies or services, (vi) development of new waste sorting / recovery activities.
