Informal waste pickers in Africa: social reproduction, marginalisation and sustainability

Abstract

Africa’s rapid urbanisation is overwhelming formal waste management systems, necessitating reliance on informal systems to manage growing volumes of municipal solid waste. This paper explores the contributions, challenges, and lived experiences of informal waste pickers in African cities across four themes: sustainable communities, systemic marginalisation, social reproduction, and occupational hazards. It examines how waste pickers, through their informal work practices, help sustain essential urban functions and contribute to environmental management, particularly where formal systems are fragmented or under-resourced. This sheds light on the diverse value of informal labour in realising several Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to decent work, gender equality, and sustainable cities, while also offering new insights for more inclusive approaches to urban waste management. The paper concludes with recommendations to support more inclusive, equitable, and resilient urban waste management systems across the continent. In doing so, it calls for research on informal waste pickers to engage more closely with debates in urban studies that conceptualise “people as infrastructure”, as a means of more fully accounting for the ways in which informal actors sustain, repair, and reproduce urban life in African cities.