Speaker: Frederica Mendonça (Research Affiliate at Nova SBE NOVAFRICA Knowledge Centre)
Date: 2 December 2025 (online)
Time: 1 p.m.
Duration: 1 hour
Title: Road to somewhere: Introducing ReCycling in a Mozambican city
Brief description of the seminar: Urban recycling in Sub-Saharan Africa remains below five percent due to coordination failures: households lack incentives to separate waste when collection is unreliable, while collectors avoid markets with scarce supply. In this project, I implement a randomised field experiment to test whether low-cost interventions can overcome this barrier in Quelimane, Mozambique. The intervention combined household information on recycling with the creation of a buyback centre that engaged bicycle taxi drivers as waste collectors. A second treatment arm adds a conspicuous signalling device to reinforce pro-social motives from households. Within eighteen weeks, cyclists delivered 3,109 kilograms of recyclables, exclusively from treated households, while earning substantially more than on passenger trips. This translates into a significant increase in cyclists’ self-reported weekly earnings. Households report less burning and a 30% increase in separated waste. I also observe an increase in satisfaction with the city’s waste management. These preliminary findings suggest that mobilising informal transport networks, supported by light-touch interventions with households, can enhance recycling outcomes, raise earnings, and provide a scalable model for service delivery under weak state capacity.
Session chair: Professor Catarina Roseta Palma
