Solid waste management in Kigali City, Rwanda

Abstract

Solid waste management is becoming an important issue in Kigali City. Batch of wastes
can be seen in various spaces such as roads, riversides and many other open spaces, and this
constitutes a crucial problem to human beings in particular and environment in general, the
accumulation of these wastes will attract rats, insects, flies and many other pathogens which in turn
cause problems, such as water contamination, infectious diseases like diarrheal and so on. Rwanda,
being a densely populated country, is undergoing rapid urbanization and a huge number of people
are leaving rural areas to Kigali City, this leads to an increasing of challenges associated with
providing an effective basic infrastructure including solid waste management system. As cities grow,
wastes generated increase in volume as well as in variety. Rwandan urban population growth rate
was 5% per year in the period 1978-1991 and currently stands at 9% per year and continues to
increase. Regarding these changing issues this paper analyzed the current solid waste management
system in Kigali City and proposed some approaches which can be used to solve the problems
associated with it, where recycling and composting were found to be more suitable.