Solid Waste Management in Africa has long been a neglected area. Only less than 5% of the total SWM-focused development finance between 2003 and 2012 was received by Sub-saharan Africa region. However, Africa’s urbanization rate is 3.5%, the highest in the world. Due to the rapid urbanization in recent years, municipal solid waste management has become a big challenge for many cities, as lower income cities in Africa expected to double their municipal solid waste generation within the next 15-20 years.

Moreover, in 2015, the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with over 250 measurement indicators. Of these indicators, several were specifically designed to yield information on waste, including municipal solid waste (indicator 11.6.1), hazardous waste (12.4.2) and recycling rates (12.5.1).

However, these waste SDG lack data or any agreed monitoring methodologies.

To address the increasing problem of waste management in Africa, in April 2017, UN-Habitat joined its effort with UN Environment, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Ministry of the Environment and Yokohama City to establish African Clean Cities Platform, a knowledge sharing, SDG monitoring and investment promotion platform for the improved solid waste management and achieve waste SDGs in Africa.