"Social Entrepreneurship" Award from SUEZ-Institut de France

The Social Entrepreneurship Award, for a sum of €50,000, is awarded to a social entrepreneur for an initiative in the field of water access, sanitation or waste management. It aims at supporting business activities developed by social entrepreneurs in the sectors of water, sanitation and waste management in developing countries. These initiatives, which often generate jobs, have a positive social impact, particularly for poor and at-risk populations.

In many African cities, waste disposal is a complex problem due to a lack of budget and adequate solutions. The group of French-Ivorian startups C + PROPRE-COLIBA has developed a solution that encourages households to sort their waste, and inclusive of the informal sector in the process. Through an application, subscribers order identifiable and specific bags for household waste or sorting. An integrated geolocation service ensures optimal collection by –previously informal- pre-collectors. A system of points redeemable as gifts (telephone credits, cosmetics, etc.) has been set up to encourage sorting.

The project to recycle and reuse waste from electrical and electronic equipment (EEEW) developed by Solidarité Technologique has the main objective of supporting the integration of deprived youngsters and reducing the digital divide thanks to very low-cost professional training programmes in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The equipment recovered from companies is upgraded within the context of practical workshops and can be provided to trainees trained by Solidarité Technologique for their own small company creation needs.

Equipment is also made available to schools and educational establishments selected by Solidarité Technologique. With its success, Solidarité Technologique has been able to find the necessary funds (6 million euros), ensuring its development in the next 5 years. The goal is to reach 5000 tons of D3E treated per year, against 500 today.

Sanergy improves sanitary conditions in Nairobi’s urban slums thanks to “Fresh Life Toilets”, an innovative sanitation, waste recycling and recovery project. The social enterprise builds latrines which are then sold to local micro-entrepreneurs. A team of waste collectors removes the waste from the toilets on a daily basis. Then Sanergy converts the waste into organic fertilizer and electricity which are sold to commercial farms and to the grid.

Thanks to Sanergy, more than 12,000 residents now have access to hygienic sanitation and 1 500 tons of waste have been collected and safely removed from the community. Sanergy has extended its business model to create a network that now includes 1,747 Fresh Life Toilets which are managed by 1,102 local operators who live on their salaries. Today, 56,543 people benefit from this service on a daily basis. The project has even evolved into a new model, integrating Fresh Life Toilets into homes.

Green Bio Energy Ltd. (GBE Ltd.) is the first social enterprise to manufacture and sell charcoal briquettes in Uganda. This activity allows Green Bio to face three major problems in this country: waste management, mainly from organic waste, which represents more than 80% of the whole solid waste; charcoal price, which has risen regularly; and massive deforestation.

In 2018, the coal briquettes’ project developed by Green Bio Energy in Uganda benefited 270,000 people; 2,000 tons of recycled briquettes were sold, which is the equivalent of 1, 880 tons of recycled plastic. In ecological terms, the impact is just as positive: an estimated 1,300,000 trees were saved.