Managing Gambia' Waste

For many years now waste has been a huge and nagging problem in the Gambia’s urban areas. Currently, most of the waste generated in The Gambia is either burned, buried or thrown away. As a result, more than 90 percent of solid waste produced in Banjul and the Kombos ends up in landfills or gets dumped in water bodies. And as the country's population continues to rise, the waste problem will only get worse. So, what do we do with all the growing heaps of filthy waste before we find ourselves in the middle of the worst environmental crisis The country will ever known? Is it that our expert are not aware that the solution could be to convert waste into animal feed just like how it is done in South Africa and other countries..Our business men should be smart enough to set up businesses that can grow maggots from waste collected from markets, households and businesses. The maggots are then processed into a highly nutritious protein supplement that to be used as animal feeds. In other countries waste is converted into electricity. Those of you who probably has visited Addis Ababa know more than me that the Ethiopians has a waste recycling factory that produces over 50 megawatts of electricity from waste collected from across the city of Addis.and they supply over 2 million homes with electricity, and thus helping them avoid the release of millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. I therefore implore budding Gambian entrepreneurs to be hard at work and try to squeeze out value from waste, and in the process, create an industry that could provide both low and high-level jobs for thousands of people.