Technological watch

A project in Nigeria that turns plastic pollution into designer textiles and accessories, buy-back schemes to help women and young people earn money through recycling, and a project that turns plastic waste into school benches in Rwanda are finalists in the running to win £1m in the first strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge.

× Expand Finalists named in £1m prize to tackle plastic pollution in Africa Finalist Chanja Datti Ltd (Nigeria) aims to turn plastic recyclable waste into currency.

Other innovations in contention for the Accelerating Growth strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge are:

• Mega Gas Alternative Energy in Kenya which uses a thermal cracking process to convert plastic trash into clean cooking gas for people living on less than a dollar a day;
• A scalable community recycling programme from Chaint Afrique Academy on the shores of Lake Volta in Ghana to prevent waste entering the marine ecosystem; and
• The Full Development Agency in the city of Bukavu, DR Congo, creating building materials from plastic waste to improve the urban environment.

Other African innovations in contention for the prize include an enterprise in Côte d'Ivoire that empowers households to set up small businesses collecting recyclable waste from their communities; companies in South Africa and Ghana producing durable house bricks from recycled plastic; and an end-to-end plastics management company in Togo that collects, sorts, cleans and shreds plastics before they are recycled into new products.

The Afri-Plastics Challenge is awarding approximately £8m to innovators in sub-Saharan Africa across three prize strands to tackle plastic pollution, reduce plastic consumption and shift attitudes towards the