WEEE Centre targets youth in its job creation drive

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Centre Limited (WEEE Centre) will, through a mix of technical assistance improve the operations of the company to unlock market constraints and create jobs, including for the most vulnerable such as people living with disability.

The firm seeks to generate knowledge, data and evidence on ways of addressing barriers to job creation and disseminate findings to relevant stakeholders, including potential investors.

Through the Kenya Catalytic Jobs Fund, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office aims to provide technical assistance and grant funding to organizations with the potential to implement innovative solutions with the potential to create large scale, productive jobs for youth and women.

The firm was among the 5 winners of KCJF competition for 2021 were awarded £100,000, a one year catalytic jobs fund.

“WEEE Centre’s participation in this project focuses on collection and recycling of e- waste materials and creating an estimated 2,087 jobs out of which 87 are direct jobs for formal employment and 2,000 as indirect jobs,” said the Chief executive of WEEE Centre, Bonnie Mbithi.

Mbithi noted that the firm has been working with NEMA guidelines, international treaties; the Basel Convention, Stockholm and Bamako convention to safely manage e-waste as per global standards in absence of proper legal framework in the country.

Kenya is generating 51.3 thousand tons of e-waste annually as per UN data of 2020 and only 1 percent of this is properly collected and managed with the 99 percent dumped carelessly.

To date WEEE Centre has safely disposed over 10,000 tons of e-waste, reduced Co2 emissions by over 14,400 tones and created over 2,000 jobs to young Kenyans.

It has the capacity to manage not only all the e-waste generated in Kenya but also the East African region and projects to create over 5000 jobs within the next 3 years.”

WEEE Centre is responsible for repair, maintenance and disposal of all gadgets used on the Digital Literacy Program (DLP) that has been rolled out by the current government. At least 40 percent the trained youth are actively involved in the DLP activities through the WEEE Centre.