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Mombasa Island is a paradise on the surface, with pristine beaches and turquoise embrace of the Indian Ocean.

Walking through the narrow streets of Old Town, lined with antique buildings that house shops selling traditional Swahili and Arabic goods, the air carries the fragrance of spices, a reminder of the city’s rich history as a spice trade hub.

As night descends, the island comes alive with a vibrant sense of community. Friends and neighbours gather in cosy clusters, engaging in leisurely conversations over steaming cups of kahawa chungu — spiced coffee brewed with robust intensity and just a whisper of sweetness.

Often accompanied by halua (halva), a delicate, jelly-like candy, these moments unfold under the soft glow of streetlights. The tantalising aromas from these informal coffee joints are impossible to resist.

And kahawa chungu is not the only speciality. Other coastal treats include crispy viazi karai (fried potatoes), golden bajia, crunchy kachiri (crisps), sweet mahamri (Swahili doughnuts), creamy mbaazi za nazi (pigeon peas in coconut milk), fluffy vitumbua (coconut rice pancakes), and mkate wa sinia (rice and coconut cake).

Delivered little

This blend of tradition and flavour draws visitors to Mombasa like moths to green lanterns. Yet, beneath this breathtaking allure lies a contrasting reality that dampens the island’s charm! Mounds of garbage and raw sewage often mar the city’s beauty.

 Driving through the iconic MacKinnon Market, better known as Marikiti Market, visitors are struck by the pervasive stench that now defines the area.

In Kongowea near Ratna Square, heaps of garbage often spill onto roadsides, creating an eyesore. On some nights, the acrid smell of burning waste permeates the air, with thick smoke engulfing entire neighbourhoods.

“It’s really suffocating,” laments James Gitau, who has lived in Kongowea for six years.

“Sometimes we have to stay indoors to avoid the stench. It feels like we’re captives of the garbage. We have no freedom to breathe.”

Gitau explains that indiscriminate dumping has been ongoing for weeks, attracting crows and swarms of flies into homes and exposing residents to the risk of diseases.

“It’s disturbing. We pay taxes, yet we don’t get proper services,” he adds.

Amidst this bleak scenario, some enterprising youth in Mombasa have discovered an opportunity to turn waste into a source of livelihood.

For Mwatunje Anderson Tunje, chairman of Jikuze Nyayo Youth Group, mounds of waste are not an eyesore but a treasure trove.

Nestled in Mtopanga, Kisauni, Tunje’s group purchases recyclable materials such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), glass bottles, scrap metals, animal bones (excluding human and elephant bones), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), shoe soles, and coconut shells from waste pickers. These materials are then sorted, weighed and sold to recycling companies like Taka Taka Solutions.

Tunje’s group is among the army of green entrepreneurs trained by Sote hub- an Entrepreneur Support Organisation (ESO) with a prominent focus on Blue Economy. Sote hub gives startup incubation by offering entrepreneurs guidance, training and resources to materialise their project.

“We were trained by Sote Hub for six months and thereafter followed up with linkages with other organisations such as Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) which took us through further trainings, virtual and physical,” says Tunje

They have been trained on entrepreneurship skills, leadership skills and how to businesses management.

“They also supported us with a Sh30, 000. They have also helped us further improve our operations by providing us with startup kits such as Protective gears to use in our daily duties,” he explains.

“Before that we used to sustain injuries and also contract infections…we prepare our products by crashing the glass bottles and sorting the waste. In the process some of us would sustain tetanus through deep cuts and so on.”

Through this work, Tunje’s group has grown significantly.

“We’ve expanded from handling two to three tonnes of waste monthly to 30 tonnes,” he says.

The group now operates three buyback centre and provides direct and indirect employment.

“People used to call us ‘chokora’ (street families), but now we are respected as green entrepreneurs.”

The success has transformed Tunje’s life.

“Through waste collection, I’ve bought land and am building a home. I’m also supporting my siblings’ education,” he shares proudly.

Similarly, Robin Kariuki, CEO of Plas-Tech, views plastic waste as a goldmine. Using pyrolysis-based technology, his company recycles plastic into cooking gas. “We melt plastic in a controlled chamber and harvest the gas. After purification and filtration, we produce clean cooking gas,” Kariuki explains.

Chemistry lessons

The project, developed by a team of four professionals, began as childhood curiosity about burning plastics. This would later be fuelled by chemistry lessons in high school with the eye-opening knowledge that a yellow flame mostly indicates unsaturated fuel- Hydrocarbon.

“We realised that plastic, being a petroleum product, could be reversed into gas,” says Kariuki.

The team’s breakthrough earned them a Sh1 million grant from the Mombasa Plastic Prize. From there, he says they built everything, including the machines they operate, from scratch.

The whole process, he says, begins with collecting plastic waste. They do this by working with youth groups from where they buy the plastic waste. They then sort the plastics, clean, crash and mix in a particular ratio to get a specific type of gas.

“This ratio is our secret. After washing and mixing the material into the required ratio, it is dried up first before it is inserted into a machine. Once the machine is switched on the heaters and pressure censor are ignited and one hour later the gases are produced. It is later purified, filtered and compressed to produce a cooking gas. What is left is a black residue,” he says.

While the gas is not yet certified for sale, Plas-Tech has produced 900 kilogrammes of gas from 1.2 tonnes of plastic in their ongoing research. “We’re striving to perfect the process and increase efficiency,” Kariuki notes.

Joyce Moses, a VSO leader in Mombasa, emphasises the organisation’s role in supporting vulnerable youth in the waste management value chain.

“The support we bring in is to empower them at different levels that is either in trainings, equipment that assist them run their projects…we are also supporting them in incubation through some of our partners like Sote hub in implementing nurture up bucket that is incubation and acceleration. We also link them up in business network forums where the primary actors link up with various stakeholders that support youth, and climate,” she says.

Over 60 groups, comprising more than 1,000 waste pickers, have benefited from these initiatives in Mombasa