In Tunisia, the northern city of Bizerte will have its own solid waste management centre by April 2023. The facility is funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the German international development cooperation agency, in partnership with the municipality of Rostock in Germany.
The initiative, which will enable the annual treatment of at least 2.6 million tonnes of solid waste in this city of 140,000 inhabitants, will be implemented by the local authorities and the Tunisian Ministries of the Interior and the Environment. It will be jointly piloted by Abdallah Nasour, a researcher on the circular economy and sustainable development at the University of Rostock, and Badereddine Lasmer, the director general of Tunisia’s National Waste Management Agency (ANAGED).
Several Tunisian cities are confronted with pollution accentuated by the poor collection of household waste and the proliferation of illegal dumps. In this context, local authorities are counting on international cooperation to try to strengthen their waste management systems. It is within this framework that the GIZ and the German city of Böblingen have equipped the governorate of Gafsa, located in the south-west of Tunisia, with a household waste sorting centre in 2020. The 250,000 Tunisian dinars (nearly 80,000 euros) facility is already sorting cardboard, plastic waste and drinks cans. These products are then sold to recycling plants.
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At the same time, the Tunisian capital has been hosting since February 2023 a training course on sustainable urban waste management organised by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in partnership with the municipality of Yokohama in Japan and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). The courses, which will take place at the International Centre for Environmental Technology in Tunis (CITET), will provide training for 24 municipal officials from various African countries.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi