Kenya: Green transition faces its toughest test
Written by: Ayman Ragab
For decades, thousands of Nairobi’s poorest residents have performed one of the city’s most vital environmental services. Every day, informal waste collectors in Dandora sort, extract, and collect plastic, metal, paper, glass, and electronic waste that would otherwise remain buried beneath one of Africa’s largest and oldest landfills. In doing so, they contribute to Nairobi’s recycling economy. Yet, despite performing work increasingly celebrated by cities as part of the circular economy, they are rarely recognized as environmental workers.
Kenya is now preparing to close the Dandora landfill. From an environmental perspective, few would question this decision. Officially declared full in 2001, the landfill continues to receive over 2,000 tons of waste daily and has become a prominent symbol of Nairobi's environmental crisis. National and local authorities have revived plans to replace it with a new waste management facility in Ruwai. The environmental argument for closing Dandora is strong, but the social argument is less clear. Public debate has largely focused on pollution, public health, and urban regeneration, with far less attention paid to the thousands of people whose livelihoods are tied to the landfill. The real challenge, therefore, is not simply how to close Dandora, but how to transform the informal eco-economy that has grown around it without destroying the livelihoods that depend on it.
The workers whom the city forgot to count
Across Africa, informal waste collectors extract millions of tons of recyclable materials annually. They help reduce the volume of waste in landfills, supply industries with valuable raw materials, and provide an essential environmental service. Yet, they remain largely excluded from formal waste management systems and lack legal recognition, social protection, and an effective role in environmental planning.
Every day, waste pickers climb piles of freshly dumped garbage in search of used plastic, metal, paper, and electronics. Women make up a large proportion of this workforce, with most earning between 300 and 500 Kenyan shillings a day, just over two euros. Waste picker organizations say working conditions are becoming increasingly difficult due to growing competition, the scarcity of recyclable materials, and the ever-rising cost of living.
An environmental crisis that has always been man-made
Their work also exposes them to serious health risks. Electrical cables are burned to extract copper, and electronic waste containing lead, mercury, and other hazardous materials is dismantled manually. Numerous studies have documented high levels of pollution affecting the soil, air, and water around Dandora, with effects extending far beyond the landfill itself to neighboring communities like Korogocho. One of the waste collectors told me during a field visit, “Shortness of breath and a constant cough are normal here, but if we don’t work, we won’t eat.”.
Few sentences capture the fundamental paradox of Dandora more clearly. The landfill is both an environmental disaster and a source of livelihood for thousands of families. Peter Waroe, a community organizer in Dandora, offered a different perspective. “People think this is just garbage,” he told me during my fieldwork. Then, in Swahili, he added, “lakini kwetu sisi ni kazi” (but for us, it’s work). As he put it, “There is no waste in Boma,” the name many workers use for the landfill. What appears to outsiders as discarded materials quickly acquires value, entering a chain of sorting, storage, transport, and resale that connects waste collectors, traders, and recycling sectors across Nairobi.
This contradiction became glaringly obvious in February of this year when the Kenyan Environment and Land Tribunal ruled that more than a thousand waste collectors had been subjected to hazardous working conditions and long-term pollution, and awarded compensation to those affected. The ruling acknowledged a fact that had been largely ignored for decades: that the environmental crisis in Dandora has always been a humanitarian crisis as well.
A transformation is already underway
In the vicinity of Dandora, these transformations have already begun. Residents of neighboring Korugucho describe a distinctly changing landscape: the deepest part of the quarry has been filled in, work has begun on a new access road connecting adjacent neighborhoods, and there are reports of numerous homes being demolished without warning. For many residents, these are not isolated construction projects, but rather the first visible signs of a broader urban reshaping, the social consequences of which remain unclear.
If the Dandora landfill were to close, the livelihoods and networks that have grown up around it would have to be reshaped. Understanding this challenge requires looking beyond the landfill itself. Dandora didn't simply arise because Nairobi lacked a place to dispose of its waste; it is the product of decades of rapid urbanization, chronic underinvestment in waste management, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and repeated failures to develop viable alternatives. Therefore, the landfill is not just an environmental problem awaiting a solution; it is also the result of long-standing political choices.
Redesigning the system, not just relocating the landfill.
A complex urban economy has developed around the landfill. Materials discarded by households and businesses enter direct chains of sorting, storage, transport, and resale, linking waste collectors, traders, and recycling companies across Nairobi. Access to valuable materials is often regulated through informal agreements, local control, and networks of middlemen, rather than formal regulation. Closing the landfill may relocate the waste, but it will not automatically end the socio-economic relationships that have developed around it over decades.
Therefore, the challenge facing Nairobi is not simply replacing one landfill with another, but rather redesigning the entire waste management system, taking into account the workers, knowledge, and economic relationships involved. Long before Nairobi officially adopted the concept of a circular economy, the waste collectors in Dandora were already practicing it. Their work helped reduce the amount of waste in landfills, supplied raw materials to recycling industries, and created environmental value without any official recognition.
Closing the Dandora landfill is essential. Few who have witnessed its environmental and health impacts would disagree. But closing the landfill is easier than shutting down the economy that has grown around it. Kenya’s green transformation will ultimately be judged not only by the cleanliness of its landscape but also by whether the workers who have sustained Nairobi’s recycling economy are allowed to remain part of it.
