By Viola Kosome

KISUMU, Kenya - Maurice Ouko watches his two-month-old tilapia dart through the water inside his fish cage on Lake Victoria, moments after feeding time. Nearby, a small floating house, its door facing the cage, shelters a night guard tasked with protecting the fish from thieves.

For Ouko and other cage fish farmers in Kisumu, the round-the-clock surveillance is a necessary expense as they wait months for their stock to mature and fetch a price at market.

How Used Electronics Create Profits Abroad While Poisoning Nigerians

By Muhammad M. Ali

By the banks of River Gadabul in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, scrap dealers burn discarded refrigerators, air conditioners to recover copper and other valuable parts, sending smoke laden with toxic metals across nearby homes, farms and water sources.

Children swim in the river as plastic casings, wires and insulation foam smoulder nearby. Sugarcane vendors operate within metres of the fires. There are no warning signs, protective equipment or visible enforcement officers.

RACE TO SUSTAINABILITY: KENYA’S STEPS TO IMPLEMENTING THE BAMAKO CONVENTION
By Laura Otieno

At the Kisumu County hospital, a heavy cloud of smoke bellows. At the furthest corner, the red-hot flames cast a blanket of heat around the incinerator. A designated worker occasionally opens the door to feed in coloured bags of trash collected from the hospital.

Mulki is a mother of five orphaned children who was displaced from southern Somalia. She and her children live in a makeshift shelter built from corrugated iron sheets and wooden planks in Shabelle IDP camp, located on the eastern outskirts of Garowe, the capital of Puntland State, Somalia.

In Dakar, the capital of Senegal, people continue to use plastic packaging daily. Despite the
existence of a law regulating its use, plastic waste is increasingly polluting the environment and
degrading the quality of life.

By William Abala

The movement of hazardous waste across Africa is not only a matter of policy. It is woven into daily life, from the plastic containers used in homes and schools to old vehicles on the road and waste arriving through ports.

This reality came into sharp focus during the Bamako Convention Clearing-House Mechanism Dialogue at USIU–Africa, where policymakers, experts, and regional representatives met to confront gaps in enforcement, accountability, and public awareness around hazardous waste governance.

At eight in the morning in Dagoretti, whilst lessons begin at nearby schools and teachers call out names from class registers, a different routine unfolds behind a row of shops near the main road.

Nine boys, all of school-going age, are gathered at an informal scrap metal yard, bending over piles of burnt electric wires, twisted iron sheets and broken electronics. None of them are in school.

By Catherine Tembo
LILONGWE, Malawi. In the deepest corners of Lilongwe, thin plastics lie scattered across roads, markets, and waterways silent evidence of a waste crisis that refuses to fade.