ABSTRACT
It is a given that cities produce large quantities of waste. The management of this waste, whether it is residential, industrial or specialist (for instance medical) waste, often requires sophisticated and expensive treatment. In cities of the global south where the capacity to tax or charge for services is limited, waste is often an unmanaged and unregulated environmental blight, and its management is often a physical manifestation of political and social challenges of urban governance and urban service delivery. This chapter uses examples from African cities and a case study from Dar es Salaam to interrogate the institutional and environmental challenges of urban solid waste management (SWM), reflecting on the dirty politics of inclusion and exclusion associated with waste. In succession, I deal with the perceptions of waste as a problem in African cities in comparison to the realities of waste (mis) management for the continent's urban areas, and then the empirical analysis of planning efforts to address the problem in African settings, ending with the Dar es Salaam case study.
