Inside Kampala’s garbage management politics

After sorting the trash, the biodegradable waste is treated and then fed into an assortment of machinery and processed into fertilisers.

Zoomlion Ghana Limited, which commenced operations in 2007, has contracts with all local government assemblies in Ghana for waste management.

The company is one of the subsidiaries of Jospong Group of Companies, founded by Mr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, with business interests in waste management, ICT, and banking.

Jospong Group of Companies and Mr Agyepong have been a fixture in Uganda since the August 10 collapse of the Kiteezi landfill, on the outskirts of Kampala, killing 34 people, injuring 21, displacing 280, while 11 are reportedly still missing.

After back and forth discussions, including meetings with President Museveni in October, Jospong Group of Companies was handed the deal to decommission the Kiteezi landfill.

The company was brokered by a prominent Member of Parliament, who is also said to be their point person.

Between September 20 and 22, a five-person delegation team led by the Junior minister for Kampala and Metropolitan Affair Kabuye Kyofatogabye visited Accra for due diligence on the company’s various waste management operations, including the Accra Composting Cycling Plant which processes a reported 2,000 tonnes of waste up from 600 tonnes.

Mr Kyofatogabye and the team also visited the Kpone landfill outside Accra, which the company decommissioned in 2022 after 15 years of use.

It is on the basis of this experience that the Ugandan government handed the Kiteezi landfill to the Jospong Group.

The Inspector General of Government, Ms Beti Kamya, had put brakes on the deal on October 17, after reports of contract irregularities and flouting procurement guidelines were raised, however she was told to back off following a meeting in October at State House, Entebbe, between the President and Jospong Group’s executives.

The company indicated to start decommissioning the Kiteezi landfill in March 2025 processing some 2,000 tonnes of waste.

What the Ugandan due-diligence team did not establish is that Zoomlion Ghana Limited has been mired in a lot of controversies in Ghana over the years, including being debarred by the World Bank for two years “following the company’s acknowledgment” of misconduct impacting the bank-financed Emergency Monrovia Urban Sanitation Project in Liberia.

“The company paid bribes to facilitate contract execution and processing of invoices,” the World Bank Group wrote on September 25, 2013.

Later in 2014, the then Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama’s government pulled the plug on a list of companies, including Jospong Group’s subsidiaries, Ghana Management Services Ltd, over questionable contracts.

Akwaba from Accra

In 2018, GhanaWeb reported that Zoomlion Ghana Limited was fingered by a special audit of the Ghanaian Auditor General accusing the company of having received illegal payments from National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and directed to refund 400m Ghana cedi (about Shs96b). The company denied the claims and threatened legal suit over the matter.

In February 2018, a High Court in Accra dismissed a case in which Jospong Group’s chairman, Mr Agyepong sued investigative journalist, Mr Manasseh Azure Awuni, for defamation.

Mr Awuni had sought information on all contracts entered by Jospong Group’s companies and various ministries and departments.

Mr Awuni, according to several news articles published in Ghana, has accused Jospong Group, and Zoomlion Ghana Limited of misconduct and exploitation of its workers.

In August 2021, it was reported that the Ghanaian Auditor General directed Jospong Group to refund 95m Ghana cedi (Shs22.8b), received since 2016 from various Ghanaian local governments for waste management but without any legal basis.

In 2022, it was reported that the Ghanaian Auditor General revealed that Zoomlion Ghana Limited had been “unduly paid” 40m Ghana cedi (Shs9.6b).

In an earlier, August-2017 article published by Graphic Online, Jospong Group’s chairman, Mr Agyepong, bemoaned the continued labelling of local businesses as corrupt.

“It is only in Ghana that a local company is attacked because it comes up with an idea that can help solve a development problem,” Mr Agyepong was quoted as saying.

This publication was unable to establish Jospong’s official representatives in Uganda for a comment on the claims published by the Ghanaian media. The Ministry of Kampala said the company was still setting up operations.

The Minister for Kampala, Ms Minsa Kabanda, told this newspaper to leave Jospong Group alone when put to task about the company’s past.

“As number one we have zeroed on Ghanaian company Jospong to decommission Kiteezi. They have their own money. They will compact it, cover it and leave it there. Maybe afterwards they will do other things,” Ms Kabanda said.

She added: “We reported what was there and that is why we took them to the President to second them to start the business of decommissioning because it is dangerous. The IGG has also written back recommending them. I don’t have any issue with the Ghanaian people but if anyone has that information about them, we can receive that information but I have not received that information, plus he has not asked for any money. I have no worries. If he had, maybe you would think March be he wants to get money from me, but he has not asked for anything. He just wants to start work.”

The condemned Kiteezi landfill was started in 1996 as a dumping site for garbage from Kampala, when the city’s population was estimated around 774,241 as per to the 1991 census.

By 2015, there were warning signs that the dumpsite was an accident— of the landfill spilling beyond its buffer zone—waiting to happen, however, the KCCA leadership and their supervising agencies slept on the job.

There was another alert last year in November following the heavy rains the month before.

A more serious warning was raised in January this year, which was flagged during the KCCA’s executive committee and subsequently to the ministry of Kampala and the parliamentary committee on presidential affairs, which scrutinises budgets of the latter.

Confusion in plans

World over, particularly developing countries are faced with serious garbage problems while often overlooking tested solutions such as incineration, which is increasingly criticised for its contributions to carbon emissions, or waste to energy and waste to fertiliser, especially for biodegradable waste—from plant or animal sources.

A May 2023 study on waste and recycling by the German development cooperation, GIZ, detailed some 1,300 to 1,500 tonnes of garbage are collected daily around the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area of which 43 percent is biodegradable waste, followed by mixed fines (waste) at 42 percent, plastics at six percent, animal waste at three percent, sanitary waste at three percent, paper at two percent, and textile and glass at 0.5 percent, respectively.

Compare that with the waste composition of the Philippines in Far East Asia, which generated about 61,000 million metric tonnes of waste daily, of which 24 percent is plastic waste as of 2023, according to the country’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Accra, a rapidly urbanising city of more than two million people---compared to Kampala’s 1.8 million as per the 2024 census—generates approximately 2,419 tonnes of waste daily, or 75,000 tonnes of waste monthly, of which 53 percent is organic matter and 16 percent is plastics.

In developed countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, landfills are well-engineered and operated facilities, including processing the waste.

This rethink of approach and method has for the most part eluded Uganda owing to several factors, including politics, corruption, and confusion among the different agencies.

In 2016, KCCA acquired 135 acres of land to urgently decommission Kiteezi and develop a modern landfill at Ddundu in Kyampisi Sub-county in Mukono District. The plans never materialised due to non-prioritisation until tragedy struck on August 10.

Ddundu area residents had also rejected part of their village being turned into a dumpsite for waste generated 40km away, leaving Kiteezi as the only option.

In a separate twist, Ms Kabanda revealed last week that KCCA had acquired 200 acres of land at Bujuko on Mityana road to develop a new landfill. She, however, did not elaborate what this means for the Ddundu plans.

Meanwhile, KCCA was receiving proposals from private companies interested in developing private landfills either at Ddundu or elsewhere, but the suggestions were mired in politics or officials soliciting bribes to greenlight the proposal.

KCCA officials put the number of such proposals received over the years at 100.

One such company which has been stuck in advanced stages, but with government officials tossing them around is, NLS Waste Power Plant Ltd which proposed to develop a waste-to- energy power plant in Mbalala, Mukono District using the waste generated in Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area. The company planned to generate 115MW from the garbage.

NLS Waste Power Plant, went a notch higher, procure dustbins for KCCA for placement at various locations around Kampala to ease garbage collection.

The company then moved into signing Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with other local governments like Entebbe, Mukono, and Mbale, among others to collect their garbage to supplement the 1,300 tonnes of waste collected from Kampala.

Weeks before the Kiteezi accident one of the three sacked KCCA executives had asked the NLS Waste Power Plant Ltd executives to first construct for them a modern house before greenlighting any of the company’s proposals.

Early last year, a Spanish company Ric Sun Investments S.L and their local partners Vida Energy Uganda Ltd materialised and proposed to develop a $100m (Shs364b) waste to energy power plant at Ddundu incinerating 1,090 tonnes of waste per day to generate 20MW.

The company didn’t make significant progress until October 2023 when they secured an audience with President Museveni and subsequently entered into a MoU with KCCA in December. The company expects to reach financial closure by the end of June 2025, and commence operations in November 2026.

Trash politics

Ric Sun Investments S.L’s chief executive for Asia and Africa, Mr Rajesh Chugh, told this newspaper that they studied the integrity of garbage at Kiteezi and it would not be of use without first requiring a lot of treatment and segregation.

“So we’ll be taking a lot of fresh waste from in and around Kampala…which will be delivered by KCCA as feedstock for our project in Dddundu,” Mr Chugh said.

He added: “Currently, the waste collected by KCCA around Kampala is around 1,300 tonnes which is still increasing because there is a lot of waste that is not collected. At our plant we want 1,100 tonnes of waste per day…and we have done studies to establish quantities ..generating 20MW.”

The Ric Sun Investments S.L/Vida Energy Uganda Ltd undertaking at Ddundu has, however, since run into strong headwinds after NLS Waste Power Plant’s lawyers, AF Mpanga, protested to the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) against processing the company’s permits for the 20MW plant.

NLS Waste Power Plant argued that the licensing of another company for a waste to power plant project grossly affects garbage quantities for which they were already licensed by ERA.

“Upon obtaining the permit to conduct Feasibility Studies, NLS has promptly done the crucial studies and submitted the Feasibility Study Report to ERA. NLS has successfully conducted the following studies: Topographical Survey (100 percent complete; Geotechnical Studies (100 percent complete); Civil Works Design (100 percent complete); Electromechanical Designs (100 percent complete); Feasibility Studies (100 percent complete); Power Evacuation Studies (100 percent complete); and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (“ESIA”) (60 percent complete),” AF MPanga wrote to ERA on October 25, 2025.

This was after ERA had on October 4 published a notice of intended application for licence for the Ric Sun Investments S.L/Vida Energy Uganda Ltd joint venture. The notice was for the public to submit their comments and views on the company’s application for licence, in accordance with Section 30 of the Electricity Act.

AF MPanga added: “The Feasibility study report confirms that the Waste to Energy plant (the “Project”) to be established by NLS can only be economically viable through collecting or obtaining enough waste to sustain the Project’s operations. Therefore, the waste generated in Kampala and its surrounding municipalities such as Entebbe, Mukono, Kira, Nansana and Makindye Ssabagabo which are collectively referred to as Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (GKMA) will be the feedstock that will be required to sustain the project and make it economically viable.”

They added: “The feedstock required to financially sustain the project is estimated at approximately 1,300 tonnes of waste daily. In order to ensure a steady supply of waste for the project, NLS must enter into supply contracts with several authorities and municipalities under the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area of the approximately 1,300 tonnes of waste daily.”

“In light of the above, we are of the view that awarding a licence to VIDA to produce electricity as a waste to Energy plant will stifle the economic viability of the NLS project. This is because both companies will be competing for the same feedstock which is the 1,300 tonnes of waste from the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area.

There will not be enough waste in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area to sustain both companies in the Waste to Energy sector.

The Feasibility Study confirms that a Waste to Energy plant is only viable on the basis of obtaining enough waste to sustain the operations of the plant.

Therefore, the absence of enough waste means that the NLS Project will not be financially sustainable since NLS will not be able to convince investors to finance the Project. This is because the availability of feedstock which is the core raw material of the Project will not be guaranteed.”

Going in circles

NLS Waste Power Plant’s executives were not readily available for comment.However, in a rejoinder to the company’s protest, Ric’s Energy’s lawyers Nambale, Nerima and Co Advocates wrote on November 15th saying they find no merit in claims of sustainability of garbage.

“There is no legal or factual basis for NLS Power Plant Limited to assert monopoly rights to waste generated in Kampala and surrounding municipalities such as Entebbe, Mukono, Kira, Nansana, and Makindye Ssabagabo. As stated in their lawyer’s letter, NLS must first enter into supply contracts with several authorities and municipalities under the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area. NLS does not have any binding supply contracts. There is no guarantee that the said local governments shall enter into supply contracts with NLS,” the rejoinder reads in part.

RIC Energy’s in-house lawyer, Ms Esther Majambere, separately asserted that insufficiency of garbage can only come from KCCA, so as long as KCCA has not said so, no one can say there's no garbage.

“The licence that was issued to NLS is for undertaking studies which can be issued to other players,” Ms MaJambere maintained.

ERA officials, on the other hand, described NLS Waste Power Plant’s protests as “valid” and the confusion sowed by City Hall puts them as a regulator in legal quandary. ERA’s director for corporate and consumer affairs said at the weekend that they had written to KCCA for guidance on the matter but are yet to get a response.

“It is true we had already licensed NLS Waste Power Plant’, but we also received Vida Energy’s proposal and we had to do as guided by the law,” Mr Wandera said.

Mr Chugh, however, defended that there is enough supply of garbage for all interested parties.

“We started engaging KCCA in 2019……and early this year they found our proposal sound…and we took them to India to show them what we are doing there. They saw what we planned to do here and gave us the green light,” he added.

Ms Kabanda, acknowledged visiting India for Vida Energy due diligence and “appreciated what they are doing but the only problem they have is the tariff.”

“They are selling to us electricity at 15 cents yet the government wants to buy it at 7 to 8 cents. That is the only problem, otherwise they have each and everything, they have done the feasibility studies, and I would recommend them but I don’t have that power. They want new garbage. They are right to get restless because we had reassured them and I know they have spent a lot of money. They wanted to go to Ddundu and want new garbage to generate electricity but they have not yet been given that chance, and that is the Ministry of Energy, not KCCA,” she added.

For two weeks, KCCA’s acting executive director, Mr Frank Rusa declined our requests for an interview.

As the garbage mess gets out hand and garbage collection costs increase, feasible waste management plans are mired in endless cycles of boardroom politics and corruption.