Abstract :
The efficient disposal of municipal solid waste is critical in maintaining the quality of urban life. Household waste removal is one of the key factors in ensuring the health and safety of the population, but is often neglected in rapidly growing cities of the Third World. This paper presents a case study of the Urban Environmental Management Project in the Côte dʹIvoire in which groups of young entrepreneurs were trained to collect household solid waste in small cities of 20,000–50,000 inhabitants located outside the capital region. The project was a joint collaboration of the US Peace Corps and the Ministries of Interior and Health in the Côte dʹIvoire. It was conceived as a local response to an increasing municipal service burden caused by the national economic crisis of the 1990s and the governmentʹs efforts to reduce the size of the national budget by decentralizing services to cities. While community based solid waste strategies have been successful in large cities in other countries, this project demonstrates the potential for innovative arrangements at lower levels of the urban hierarchy. The paper also emphasizes the importance of formalizing public-private institutional arrangements in order to ensure their long term sustainability.
