A new assessment of Pemba Island, in the Zanzibar Archipelago, has put hard numbers to a long-felt reality: the island generates more than 230 tonnes of waste every day, much of it burned in the open or dumped in informal sites. The study, led by RSK Environment (East Africa) with Lumen Associates and Patrick Matandala for the NGOs LVIA and Oikos East Africa, argues that the crisis is fixable if authorities lean into data-led planning, small-scale processing and community enterprise, a package the team has framed in a locally owned “Theory of Change.”
The timing is deliberate; Pemba is one of three Tanzanian cities targeted by the European Union’s Green and Smart Cities SASA programme — a TZS 190 billion (about €75 million) Team Europe Initiative launched in 2024 to bankroll greener infrastructure and jobs. In Pemba, LVIA and Oikos have been contracted to translate that big ticket into block-and-tackle improvements in how waste is collected and treated.
What makes Pemba’s numbers striking is not only the volume but the composition: roughly four-fifths of household waste is organic, according to the RSK team. In practice that means the island’s problem is also its solution. Organic discards are feedstock for compost, soil conditioners and black soldier fly larvae that can be milled into animal feed, a circular economy play already proven at scale in Kenya by companies that upcycle city organics into fertilizers and insect-based proteins. Done right, that shift curbs open burning and methane emissions, while creating local green jobs in collection, sorting and processing.
Pemba’s stakes are unusually high because the archipelago’s economy leans heavily on tourism. Multiple assessments, including a 2022 World Bank brief and a 2025 HRI (USDA) market report, estimate tourism contributes about 27–30% of Zanzibar’s GDP and roughly 80% of foreign-exchange earnings. Waste-choked beaches and smoke from burn piles are not just an environmental liability; they are a direct threat to revenue, jobs and the Blue Economy agenda the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar has pursued since adopting a dedicated policy in 2020.
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The study’s method matters, using GIS, the team mapped “hotspots” where waste piles up and traced gaps in infrastructure, then sat with local government, CBOs and private operators to co-design a step-by-step pathway: expand primary collection, introduce neighborhood-scale organics treatment, professionalize recovery of plastics and metals, and use data to continually tighten routes and costs. RSK’s account stresses that local participation was not an afterthought; residents contributed data and ideas that shaped the plan, increasing the odds it will be used rather than shelved.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the most common “waste treatment” is still dumping and open burning. The World Bank’s What a Waste 2.0 series puts regional collection rates at roughly 44%, with organics typically accounting for half or more of municipal waste — the very mix that smolders in open fires and emits methane in unmanaged dumps. New continental roadmaps and UN warnings in 2024–2025 have sharpened the picture: eliminating open burning is now a stated regional goal by 2040, and the external costs of mismanaged waste, from climate pollution to premature deaths, are climbing fast.
That context helps explain why Pemba’s emphasis on organics-first solutions is so consequential. Composting and insect bioconversion are not glamorous, but they are technically simple to decentralize, quicker to stand up than engineered landfills, and crucially for islands, they shrink the tonnage that must be hauled long distances. East African precedents show these systems can scale and professionalize, provided municipalities contract for steady feedstock and offtake markets are cultivated with farmers and feed mills.
Zanzibar is not starting from zero on policy. The archipelago has an Environmental Management Act (2015), its own plastic-bag regulations, and sits under Tanzania’s nationwide ban on plastic carrier bags that took effect in June 2019. The government has also reorganized around a Blue Economy lens, establishing a dedicated ministry to align marine conservation with livelihoods. Those frameworks offer the legal cover to restrict open dumping and burning, license treatment sites and channel investment into recovery. The challenge, familiar to cities from Lagos to Luanda, is consistent enforcement and predictable city finance to operate the system day in, day out.
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There are also real political-economy questions beneath the headline. Who pays for household-level collection on dispersed islands where density is low and roads are thin? How are informal pickers and community groups, often the backbone of recovery, formalized without stripping away their income? And will the region’s push toward extended producer responsibility (EPR) deliver money and materials back to island systems like Pemba’s, or will obligations be designed around mainland markets alone?
Kenya and South Africa have already enacted EPR rules that force producers to finance recovery; Rwanda’s ban on single-use plastics goes further, with levies now tightening. Those models are not copy-and-paste for Zanzibar, but they show how national policy can underwrite local infrastructure.
Pemba’s tourism has lagged Unguja’s, but its allure — reefs, mangroves, low-key beaches — is precisely what high-spend travellers seek. If waste is visibly controlled and coastal ecosystems are cleaner, the island stands to capture more of the archipelago’s visitor growth and spread earnings into communities through green jobs. Conversely, if burning continues, the Blue Economy brand will ring hollow. The World Bank’s earlier Zanzibar Urban Services Project showed that targeted investments in sanitation, drainage and solid waste could reach hundreds of thousands of residents when management and financing aligned; the SASA programme is, in effect, an attempt to reproduce that success with a climate and circular-economy twist.
On paper, the study gives Pemba a practical playbook: treat organics close to where they’re generated; professionalize collection; channel recyclables into dependable outlets; and track results with maps and metrics. The less visible but more important shift is that the plan was built with, not for, communities, a detail the consultants and NGOs involved insist is the real innovation. If local authorities now use the EU-backed SASA funding to lock in service contracts, open a few well-sited composting and black soldier fly hubs, and enforce anti-burning rules that are already on Zanzibar’s books, the island could cut smoke, protect reefs and create steady work within a single budget cycle. Because Pemba’s waste stream looks a lot like that of many African towns ~ heavy on organics, light on hazardous fractions ~ the lessons will travel.
The eye-catching figure in the new report, 230 tonnes of daily waste, is not the whole story. The real story is whether Pemba can turn its organic-rich trash into a local asset, and whether national and regional policies will backstop the unglamorous municipal work that makes circular economies real. If it does, Africa will have one more homegrown case study showing that the fastest way to clean up cities is to start where the tonnage is, with food and green waste, and to put communities in charge of the fix.
