Absa Kenya Foundation, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), and the African Guarantee Fund (AGF) have launched CirculaRising, described as Kenya’s first and largest circular economy programme. The initiative targets the creation of over 6,000 new and improved jobs within two to three years, while empowering more than 2,000 women- and youth-led micro, small, and medium enterprises operating in waste reduction, recycling, repair, and reuse. The programme aims to recycle over 6,000 tonnes of waste and positively impact more than 30,000 lives indirectly. It arrives at a pivotal moment for Kenya, which generates an estimated 22,000 tonnes of waste daily — the vast majority of which ends up in open dumpsites or is burned — while women-led enterprises continue to face severe financing barriers, with an estimated 70% lacking access to adequate financing across the continent. Co-funded by the German government and the IKEA Foundation, CirculaRising combines training, coaching, market access, and financing support across three tailored phases designed to reach enterprises from micro-level startups to medium-scale exporters.
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Key Overview
- Programme scope: Over 2,000 women- and youth-led MSMEs targeted across Kenya, with more than 6,000 jobs to be created or improved.
- Environmental targets: 6,000 tonnes of waste to be redirected through reduction, reuse, repair, and recycling by 2028.
- Three components: The CirculaRising Academy (2,000 micro-enterprises), the Accelerator (150 growth-stage small enterprises), and the Scale-Up (25–30 medium and large enterprises).
- Financing gap: African women face a $42 billion annual financing gap, with only 7% of women-led MSMEs in Kenya having formal access to financial services.
- Funding partners: Co-funded by the German government and IKEA Foundation, with the Academy fully funded by Absa Kenya Foundation.
- National context: Kenya is developing a Circular Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan to shift from a linear “take-make-dispose” model to a sustainable system.
- Mobilisation target: More than EUR 2 million in financing to be mobilised by 2028.
Why Kenya Needs a Circular Economy Push
Kenya’s waste management challenge is immense. The country generates an estimated 22,000 metric tonnes of waste per day, according to the National Environmental Management Authority, with around 60% being organic material that could theoretically be recycled. Yet only a small fraction is recovered. More than 75% of daily waste is currently mismanaged, ending up in open dumpsites or burned, contributing to pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and severe health risks.
Nairobi alone produces between 2,000 and 2,500 tonnes of solid waste every day, much of it organic material and plastics. The Dandora dumpsite — the capital’s primary disposal site — holds over 1.8 million tonnes of waste against a design capacity of just 500,000 tonnes, with over 2,500 tonnes of additional garbage arriving daily. Particulate matter levels in Nairobi remain 70% above WHO recommended maximums.
Yet within this crisis lies significant economic opportunity. Improved waste recovery could unlock billions of shillings in value annually, create tens of thousands of jobs, and support the formalisation of a largely informal waste sector. The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) noted that with regulations such as the Sustainable Waste Management Act (2022) and growing consumer demand for sustainable products, the case for circular solutions has never been stronger.
It is against this backdrop that CirculaRising has been designed — not simply as a training programme, but as an integrated system combining skills development, market access, and financing to help MSMEs build viable businesses from circular practices.
How CirculaRising Works: Three Phases
The programme is structured into three components, each targeting a different segment of the enterprise spectrum.
The CirculaRising Academy, fully funded by Absa Kenya Foundation, will reach over 2,000 micro-enterprises through training, coaching, market access support, and financing over 27 months. These are the smallest businesses in the circular economy — waste collectors, recyclers, upcyclers, and repair operations — many of which are run by women and young people working in informal settings.
The CirculaRising Accelerator, implemented by GIZ, will support 150 growth-stage small enterprises across Nairobi, Central, Western, Nyanza, and Coastal regions. These businesses have established operations but need capacity building, market linkages, and access to finance to scale. The accelerator uses GIZ’s SME Loop methodology — a business development tool that combines training and coaching to identify strategies and improve performance.
The CirculaRising Scale-Up component targets 25 to 30 medium- and large-sized enterprises that generate high volumes of waste and intend to scale their export operations. These enterprises will receive tailored support to develop circularity and gender action plans, along with certification in global sustainability standards. The Scale-Up is implemented by Bopinc in partnership with GIZ’s WE4D programme and aims to create 100 new jobs, improve conditions for 2,000 workers, support five companies to achieve circularity certification, and reduce 750 tonnes of waste.
Thomas Jaeschke, Kenya team leader for GIZ’s Employment promotion for women for the green transformation in Africa (WE4D) programme, emphasised the integrated nature of the approach: the programme combines the empowerment of women’s employment with the scaling of circular business models, drawing on both financial and advisory expertise to promote women in green value chains.
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The Women’s Financing Crisis
CirculaRising directly confronts one of Africa’s most persistent structural barriers: the exclusion of women entrepreneurs from formal financial systems. Patrick Lumumba, AGF Group Director of Capacity Development, highlighted the scale of the problem at the programme launch: despite owning 40% of all MSMEs and contributing up to 20% of Kenya’s GDP, women-led enterprises face enormous barriers. An estimated 70% lack access to adequate financing, and only 7% have formal access to financial services.
These figures reflect a continent-wide pattern. African women face an estimated $42 billion annual financing gap, according to the African Development Bank. The AFAWA initiative — a pan-African programme run jointly by the AfDB and the AGF — has been working to bridge this gap, having already approved $1.2 billion in funding for women-led enterprises in 32 countries across Africa.
AGF CEO Jules Ngankam has noted that across Africa, 70% of women are excluded financially, encompassing not just credit but also land ownership, job opportunities, leadership positions, and wealth creation. CirculaRising leverages the AFAWA initiative’s SHE Academy programme to channel financing and capacity building specifically towards women-owned circular economy businesses.
Research consistently shows that women entrepreneurs are better at repaying loans than men and typically reinvest up to 90% of their income in the education, health, and nutrition of their families and communities — making investment in women-led MSMEs not just equitable but economically efficient.
Government Backing and National Strategy
The CirculaRising launch received direct government endorsement. Susan Mang’eni, Principal Secretary for the State Department of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, described MSMEs as the backbone of Kenya’s economy and reaffirmed government commitment to creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment for circular enterprise.
Dr. Festus Ng’eno, Principal Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, highlighted the role of MSMEs in advancing climate action and economic development, describing programmes like CirculaRising as essential for supporting green enterprise development and driving climate action at scale.
The programme aligns with a broader national push. In April 2026, the government and private sector renewed their commitment to developing a Circular Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan, a national framework being developed over seven months with support from the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra). Dr. Ng’eno has called for an inclusive approach to stakeholder engagement, urging the team to leverage the Council of Governors to gather input from county governments.
Separately, Kenya introduced a policy brief to strengthen SME participation in the circular economy within the agri-food sector, assessing both progress and the practical challenges that continue to limit circular adoption. The country’s policy toolkit already includes the Sustainable Waste Management Act, Extended Producer Responsibility regulations, and alignment with the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
The Financing Dimension
The waste management and circularity sector in Kenya faces significant financing gaps across all business stages, according to ANDE research. Purely commercial investments remain rare, with most financing limited to grants, concessional debt, and concessional equity. Because waste management businesses typically take a long time to reach profitability and scale, commercial investors with larger ticket sizes and higher return expectations have rarely entered the sector. No circularity-focused investment fund has been established in Kenya, despite their existence in other parts of the world.
CirculaRising aims to address this gap directly, with a target of mobilising over EUR 2 million in financing by 2028. The programme’s blended approach — combining grant-funded capacity building from Absa Kenya Foundation with GIZ technical assistance and AGF’s guarantee mechanisms — is designed to de-risk circular enterprises and make them more attractive to commercial lenders.
As Business Daily Africa observed in an analysis of Kenya’s circular economy ecosystem, no single institution can address the financing, capability, and market access gaps in isolation. The partnership model behind CirculaRising reflects this reality — combining a pan-African bank, a German development agency, and a continental guarantee fund in a structure that addresses multiple barriers simultaneously.
A Model Beyond Kenya
The CirculaRising launch sits within a wider continental movement. The African Development Bank has been championing circular economy as Africa’s pathway to sustainable industrial growth, hosting sessions at the United Nations Environment Assembly and supporting country-level circular economy plans in nations including Benin and Rwanda.
Absa Bank Kenya Managing Director Abdi Mohamed framed the initiative in generational terms during the launch, arguing that the next chapter of growth will belong to economies that create value differently — where waste becomes input, efficiency becomes advantage, and sustainability becomes enterprise. For decades, he noted, global growth has followed a linear model of take, make, use, and discard. While this has delivered progress, it has also generated enormous waste, placed immense pressure on natural systems, and widened inequality.
The Absa Kenya Foundation anchors its work on four pillars — entrepreneurship, education and skills development, natural resource management, and health and humanitarian relief — with CirculaRising advancing three of them simultaneously. For Absa, the programme represents a commercial as well as philanthropic logic: as circular enterprises formalise and grow, they become bankable businesses that feed into the bank’s commercial lending pipeline.
With its combination of scale, structure, and institutional backing, CirculaRising may offer a template that other African markets can adapt — addressing the twin challenges of environmental degradation and economic exclusion through the same integrated framework.
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