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This collection is part of Footprints Africa's work to build a comprehensive database of circular economy initiatives in Africa. 

This is a result of the collaboration with the <a href="https://www.acen.africa" target="_blank">African Circular Economy Network (ACEN)</a>, as part of the programme to support the circular economy transition in Africa. Footprints Africa's vision is that businesses can be a force for good at scale. Their mission is to advance sustainable, scalable and inclusive approaches to development of local African economies. Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, such as those inspired by the circular economy, to address the challenges of growth and create jobs. 

This open-source dataset features well over 500 cases and 200 examples of policies and laws and intent to collect inspiring examples of initiatives from across Africa, in order to inform the global dialogue, which is largely focused on the European and American context. 

To learn more about Africa's initiatives and content to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, visit https://www.footprintsafrica.co/



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Footprints Africa

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Business case

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Scalability

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Producing and providing business and consumer goods and services

Goods and Services

Producing indoor products for the home and office, such as furniture, including upholstery, carpets and wall-coverings, as well as cutlery, cookware, glassware, crystal, silverware, utensils, kitchenware and household specialties

Home and Office Furnishings

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Archetypes

CE Materials

Impacts

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Industries

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Materials

Nace Sectors

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Topics

Urban Opportunities

Whilst no two countries are the same, there are still obvious similarities between some of them, with discernible development patterns and parallels in evidence. Common problems and shared solutions help place unique country identities and individual issues in context.

Whilst this classification is far from clear-cut and exhibits some overlap, it does underline how the discourse on transitioning to a circular economy needs to account for both differences and commonalities, if we are to arrive at a more strategic and instructive analysis. It also allows to highlight a set of key themes that are likely to be central to the countries that fall under the respective profiles. 

Country profiles (Build, Grow, Shift)

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A framework to distinguish between different country profiles and their circular transition needs.

Browse case studies by type of implementing stakeholder.

Implementing stakeholders

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

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The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

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An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

Test Framework

Challenges

Based on the ongoing ISO standardisation process, a taxonomy has been defined under which to cluster indicators to measure circularity. 

ISO Taxonomy

If managed well, the transition to the circular economy will have multiple benefits for the labour market, including the opening up of job opportunities, raising job standards and reducing inequalities through a global redistribution of value. But a positive transition to circularity for work and workers must be underpinned by three pillars: upskilling the workforce, quality of work and inclusive job opportunities. Find out more and explore cases that illustrate these pillars below.

Circular Jobs Initiative Pillars

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A positive transition to circularity for work and workers must be underpinned by three core pillars.

This is a survey that dives into understanding the policy environment around specific circular solutions. 

The survey is divided into five sections, based on the five key elements of the Circular Cities Action Framework. 
Each section asks 2-3 questions to explore which policies may or may not be present within your city to support a transition towards a circular economy. 

You are not alone! Each question provides some practical examples from cities around the world that have adopted a certain policy to support their transition. This can help to compare with your city - is your city doing something similar?

The survey answers should be based on your current knowledge, and not illicit additional research - ! Please make use of the Not sure option as appropriate.


Ganbatte Cities Policy Tracker [Food]

Ganbatte Cities - Policy tracker policy instruments

Policy Tracker - TEST

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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Meet Yaw Boateng, the Managing Director of Lifestyle Creations, a furniture manufacturing company based in Tema, a city on the Bight of Benin and Atlantic coast of Ghana. It is located 25 kilometres east of the capital city of Accra, in the region of Greater Accra.
Easy going and with the artist name of Zuzu, Boateng introduces his country as the centre of the world on latitude zero and longitude zero; perhaps a prequel to his inspiring story in greening his business.
“I give life to dead wood,” says Boateng. “I turn waste wood into a resource and make it into something usable.”
Lifestyle Creations uses waste wood and wooden pallets to produce its furniture and other products like canteens and mobile food vans to reduce environmental impacts and contribute to the local economy. Sometimes back an alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage for both export and domestic market known as Distell Ghana Limited, was closing. As part of the decommissioning of the company’s operations, the company generated enormous amounts of wood from equipment casing which it was finding difficult to dispose of.
Preparing products from waste wood: Yaw gives life to dead wood (Photo: SWITCH Africa Green)Through Ghana National Cleaner Production Centre (GNCPC) which works with SWITCH Africa Green Programme facilitated the synergy between the two companies when they both participated in the Industrial Symbiosis Training Programme. Through a project, Enhancing Resource Productivity And Environmental Performance of MSMES In 6 African Countries through the concept of Industrial Symbiosis (IS), Distell Ghana contacted the GNCPC to help facilitate her to sell some of the waste wood to Lifestyle Creations. Lifestyle Creations subsequently went on to purchase 200 pieces of wooden boards.
“I became part of SWITCH Africa Green because it was actually was my first time to go into a programme like that in Ghana where they talked about waste in detail in a language that I could understand. ,” Boateng continues.
Lifestyle Creations intends to move into the upcycling of other waste streams such as car tires. The activities of Lifestyle Creations clearly show that there is a potential market for repurposed wood and upcycled artefacts and products.
Stacked against hope: Yaw is dwarfed by enormous wood supplies, part of what he uses for making products from discarded wood (Photo: SWITCH Africa Green)
Environmentally, synergy between Distell and Lifestyle Creations resulted initially in more than 4500 kg of waste wood being diverted from a landfill and Green House Gases (GHG) savings of 8136 kg CO2 equivalent. Distell Ghana was also able to safely dispose of the waste wood without incurring any cost. These are just examples of how this company has helped in greening its business and therefore conserving the environment.
The company has continued to train other people by allowing them to participate in apprenticeship placings to study the art of reusing waste wood for various wooden products and furniture. This has equipped the young men and women with skills for self-employment.
“It is all waste wood but at the same time, it is treated waste wood that can be used for something meaningful in this part of our world,” Boateng sums up. “But what is important to our environment is switching Africa green.”


Africa

Ghana

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Footprints Africa supports SMEs to adopt future-friendly practices, address the challenges of growth and create jobs, using supply chains as a tool for development. 

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Lifestyle Creations

<p>Lifestyle Creations uses waste wood and wooden pallets to produce furniture and other products like canteens and mobile food vans to reduce environmental impacts and contribute to the local economy. The company intends to expand its business to upcycle other types of waste, such as used car tyres. Lifestyle Creations has reused more than 4,500 kg of waste wood and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 8,136 kg through their approach. They also train locals to make furniture from waste wood</p>