In Mozambique, Urban Solid Waste Management is not effective, especially in the peri-urban areas of the large cities, which affects the health of citizens, who feel marginalised. The population is not very involved in the respect and management of public sanitation. The majority of inhabitants try to dispose of uncollected waste themselves (more than 60% in Nampula and 70% in Beira) by burning it or taking it to open dumps without any control. On the other hand, municipalities cannot optimise service provision because they do not have data on the most frequent types of problems in each part of the city.
The project is part of the National Strategy for Integrated Urban Solid Waste Management in Mozambique 2013-2025. The objective is to increase solid waste collection in the cities of Nampula and Beira by 20%, particularly in disadvantaged, hard-to-reach areas, in order to reduce the negative environmental impact of cities and support sustainable urbanisation. To achieve this objective, it will strengthen the municipalities' intervention and waste management capacities in a sustainable manner, promote the involvement of civil society and establish an inter-municipal network, including Maputo, to exchange and collect good practices and encourage a geographical and thematic expansion of the platform.
MOPA is an inclusive digital platform for coordinating the activities of waste collection actors to optimise solid waste management in cities and, in a participatory manner, improve and sanitise the urban and peri-urban environment. Already used by the city of Maputo, it is intended for all managers of technical services in municipalities to create simple and instantaneous lines of communication between city residents and the multiple actors in the sector. The platform displays on a map the reports issued by neighbourhood control officers and residents (presence of a dump, full container, etc.), and notifies by SMS in real time the municipality, the sectoral managers of the neighbourhood/district concerned and the formal and informal collection actors directly concerned by the location and type of intervention.
To ensure wider access and better mobilisation, MOPA uses three technologies: USSD, a mobile application for smartphones and a website. Once a problem has been reported, the person automatically receives an intervention number to track the progress of to track the progress of their report and intervention operations.
- Consult and train the municipalities to adapt the digital tool and the intervention to the cities’ context and strengthen their waste management capacities.
- Sensitise communities and civil society organisations to environmental and sanitary issues of Urban Solid Waste Management and train them to use the platform.
- Establish an inter-municipal network, to exchange and collect good practices and encourage a geographical and thematic expansion of the platform.