Waste Management

Lusaka Waste Management Strategy

Lack of proper waste management is a problem for many inhabitants of Lusaka. Waste is accumulating in the streets and burning of waste is a nuisance to many. Therefore the LCC has embarked on an ambitious project, the Lusaka Waste Management Project (LWMP), to remediate the situation. A Strategic Waste Management Plan has been developed as part of addressing the problems.

The overall goals and targets for the Strategic Plan have been formulated as follows:

to establish a city-wide, affordable MSW collection service to ensure that waste is brought out of the city;
to establish and operate an environmentally sound landfill on which the waste can be disposed;
to establish a sound and economically self-sustainable administrative structure within the LCC administration to initiate, operate and supervise these developments, and to provide this structure with the necessary legal and financial background to carry out its duties; and
to establish an understanding in the public that a properly working MSW collection and disposal service in a necessity for the functioning and well-being of the City and its citizens, and that it has to be paid for in order to be sustainable.

To achieve the above goals and targets the Strategic Plan proposes both a number of long-term activities and outputs, and a number of short-term activities and outputs to be carried out within the next four to five years. All the activities are presented in chapter 9 (Strategic Plan for Municipal Solid Waste Management) and the short-term activities have been summarised into an Action Plan in chapter 10 (Action Plan for Municipal Solid Waste Management). The Strategy and Action Plan will be implemented by the Waste Management Unit. The unit will also monitor the implementation and use the result of this monitoring as feedback for the elaboration of new action plans on a yearly basis (five year rolling action plan).

Implementation of the Strategic Plan and Five Year Action Plan will require substantial investments estimated to amount to approximately ZMK 45bn over the action plan period of five years. More than half of this amount is required to improve the waste collection system the cost of which shall be shared by the public and private sector. The public sector part is expected to be donor funded to a large extent.

Here you can access and download the Strategic Plan in full or chapter by chapter.

At the end of 2004, the WMU has updated their action plan and currently the second five (5) year rolling action plan is the basis for the wish of the WMU. The second five (5) can be downloaded from the links below.

Strategic Plan