UN-Habitat and partners spearheading waste management, clean energy project

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in association with implementing partners, is spearheading waste management and clean energy projects in the Harare Metropolitan Province.

“The project has only three, but very compact and complex deliverables. The first one is to promote sustainable waste-to-wealth practices in Harare, dealing with waste and making sure that people don’t look at waste as waste in itself, but look at waste as money. And looking at waste as an energy generator. So that is the first one.

“The second deliverable is to increase access to clean energy in the peri-urban and parts of the urban areas of the city of Harare. The third one is focusing on energy and resource efficiencies – looking at buildings, looking at your regulations, looking at the codes, and working with various implementing partners. These three sound quite simple when you have mentioned them, but they are extremely loaded and quite complex,” Chileshe said.

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He said several things need to be done, which have seemingly appeared to slow down the project, because the first part of the project, for the first six to twelve months, was focusing on making sure that necessary approvals have been obtained from the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), City of Harare, and the Epworth Local Board.

Chileshe said most of those processes are now complete, except for one thing that has remained – obtaining construction approvals from the city of Harare.

“That one we still haven’t had, and it’s been a thorny issue, I think, for the last couple of months because we have been led into what I would call a rabbit hole. We’ve been led into a rabbit hole, with so many promises. When we think we’re making progress, then we hit a roadblock. Yes, we can sign all of these documents and do everything but at the end of the day, we need to get something on the ground,” he said.

The project has four sites – one site in Mabvuku-Tafara, where project partners are supposed to put up an integrated resource center. Another site is at the Harare Showgrounds. The other two are in Epworth and  Highfield respectively.

So the question I’ve been asking the team is, how quickly can we start moving. So the contractors who are supposed to move into the first two sites,

Mabvuku-Tafara and Showgrounds. We have finished the evaluation process. We sent out an expression of interest in December. Nine contractors bid for the work. We sat down to go through the normal processes for the UN. And we have now completed that process and submitted it to the procurement team. We sat yesterday to look at the process that we’ve gone through and make sure that we’re compliant with UN regulations,” Chileshe added.

The implementing partners are the Zimbabwe Sunshine Group; Green Building Council; Sober Life  International,  Epworth Local Board;

and the City of Harare.

The project will result in the establishment of a waste recycling plant at the Showground. There will be construction of two integrated resource recovery centers at Highfield and two multi-clean energy centers at Epworth and Mabvuku-Tafara. There will be construction of a waste-to-wealth facility at Highfield, to produce biogas.

“All of these things are supposed to showcase what can be done with waste. We hope that once we showcase clearly what can be done with waste,

apart from cleaning up the city, we should be able to move to Bulawayo, Masvingo, Mutare, and all the other cities to deal with all sorts of things. We will also construct a carbon-neutral brick production facility. That’s why we’re working with the Green Good Building Council at Epworth. There are a lot of machines that are coming that we’ve already ordered, which in the next three to four months should arrive in Zimbabwe,” Chileshe revealed.