Waste to Wealth

In this project, we design and build a waste upcycling center in the Ugandan city of Mbarara, in collaboration with young residents of the slum Nyamitobora Ward. The goal is to create employment and income for the city’s youth through jobs in re- and upcycling, while contributing to more waste being sorted at source in households and less waste ending up in, and polluting, the urban environment.

The project is designed in collaboration with experienced Ugandan development organizations and local authorities, and is part of a larger EU-funded international development effort around job creation and waste management. The project is inspired by successful upcycling businesses in Kenya and will explore how key lessons from there can be applied in a Ugandan context.

Uganda has one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing populations and is also one of Africa’s least urbanized countries. This means that the country’s cities will grow very rapidly in the future, placing significant pressure on the government’s ability to provide basic services such as water, electricity, roads, and sanitation. Waste management is one of the major environmental challenges in Uganda’s cities, which lack household-level waste sorting. And once waste is mixed together, its recyclability—and thus its value—decreases. The project therefore includes an initiative to establish basic source separation at the household level in the nearby residential area, so that the most valuable waste fractions can then be recycled.

DEVELOPMENT TARGETS

• To increase the amount of waste separated at source in households so that more can be recycled
• To design and build a combined upcycling center and community hub in close collaboration with local users so that the building will reflect local needs and create pride, ownership and engagement in the community
• That the project will ultimately create much-needed jobs for local youth and a cleaner, less harmful local environment, because more waste is recycled or disposed of responsibly and thus does not clog drainage channels and cause flooding in residential areas during the rainy season

Project Update, September 2026:
In August 2026, two volunteers from AUG visited Mbarara and met with local representatives from youth groups who will be future users of the center. A vision workshop was held at the school where the building will be constructed, with participation from the school principal and staff, municipal employees, local leaders from the nearby informal settlement, and other project partners. The construction site was surveyed, and valuable information was gathered to guide the project’s development.