With my African background, I always try to connect my research and reading with my roots as well for future implementation/consultancy.
Throughout my literature review, I still find the whole circularity concept vague on cultural differences and the gap between rich and poor countries.
How can an understanding of our indigenous knowledge help us transition to circularity in Africa?Does Africa need circularity right now? If so, in which package and form? Should Africa copy and paste this concept as we have done with other good intended concepts? Should Africa find its own “circular version”? Should Africa have its own ambitious project as this one that I am involved in, to test the feasibility of this concept before we fully implement?
I am really grateful to have been selected/included in this ambitious EU project, it gives me and Africa the opportunity to see things with two whole different perspectives. Africa and Europe are two different things in terms of strategies but often we copy and paste.Maybe that’s why on implementation we always find ourselves stuck or struggling?
For example, it’s easy to talk about new technologies in valorising organic waste including food waste in Europe to obtain biobased products, energy, platform chemicals, etc. (my PhD research area actually), yet in some African countries access to food is the fundamental issue that the respective governments are addressing. It then becomes difficult to explain these things without addressing the basics first, in this case food access before waste.
We can have a discussion/debate on this issue and maybe share your thoughts on the subject.
