‘Our Streets Aren’t Bins’: Abidjan Young People’s War On Trash

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On a street in a working-class neighbourhood in Abidjan, a small group of young people scrubbed rubbish-clogged drains while barefoot children played nearby.

The volunteers have declared war on filth in the Ivory Coast, convinced that in order to develop, they need to keep their country clean.

Armed with shovels and brightly coloured rakes, around 10 of them turned out in the Attecoube area to “set an example”, said 22-year-old Mickael Yao, a surgical mask pulled over his nose to cope with the stench.

The densely populated district is part of Greater Abidjan, the country’s economic capital of more than six million people.

The fast-growing city produces at least 4,500 tonnes of household waste a day, according to the National Waste Management Agency (Anaged).

A year ago, Yao founded the Clean Street association after what he called a disturbing realisation.

“Most Ivorians throw their rubbish in the street and think it’s normal,” he told AFP. “Our streets are not rubbish bins.”

Since then, he has gained nationwide attention through his TikTok account, which now has nearly 50,000 followers.

Some of his videos — viewed hundreds of thousands of times — aim to raise awareness about keeping public spaces clean.

Plastic bottles and bags, fruit peels, leftover fried fish, and debris pile up rapidly in drains where water can no longer flow, sometimes causing dramatic flooding during the rainy season.

As volunteers worked under the blazing sun, passersby watched with curiosity. Before long, neighbourhood youngsters stopped their football match to lend a hand.

But that is not always the case.

“A lot of people make fun of us, asking if we’re doing this for money,” said Yao, who is currently sitting his high school exams.

He said the turning point came after travelling to neighbouring Ghana as well as Benin, whose economic capital Cotonou, has districts seen as models of cleanliness in West Africa.

“I saw that those countries were clean, so why not us?”

‘Generation to generation’

Clean Street now has more than 60 members, mostly young people, who Yao said were easier to reach as older Ivorians often see being told what to do as “disrespectful”.

Once the clean-up ends, volunteers go door to door to talk with residents.

Sitting in the shade outside her home, preparing attieke, a cassava-based Ivorian staple,  55-year-old Adjaratou Toure said her main concern was the health of children in the area.

“They go into the gutter to fetch their football. Their hands are dirty, then they buy sweets and eat them. That’s an infection,” she said.

She recalled catching her neighbour dumping a rice casserole into the drain.

“But if you complain, she’ll say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ So to avoid trouble, you let it go,” she said.

For many, cleanliness is above all a matter of education.

“From generation to generation, we’ll eventually adopt the right habits,” said 23-year-old student Betty Goli, Clean Street’s secretary-general.

At home, she is not always taken seriously. “They call me the environment minister,” she joked.

“But our voice carries further thanks to social media.”

Anti-plastic enforcement

Residents say the public is not solely to blame.

“Sometimes the rubbish collectors don’t collect — they just sweep the waste into the drains,” said one local.

Others point to a lack of bins in the streets, complaining they have to walk long distances to reach the nearest skip.

In recent years, Abidjan’s vast Akouedo city dump has been turned into an urban park and waste is now processed at a modern landfill site on the city’s outskirts.

“There are still things to improve,” said Sarrahn Ouattara, director general of Anaged, which oversees waste collection and street cleaning in Abidjan, outsourced to two private companies.

She singled out plastic waste as a major problem, adding that a 2013 decree banning plastic bags was still not enforced.

“When you drive around the city and see empty bins with piles of rubbish beside them, it means there’s also a real lack of civic responsibility,” she said.

To change things, you need both enforcement and awareness, she stressed.

For Yao, the issue is also key to Ivory Coast’s image abroad among both investors and tourists.

“Any country that wants to develop must first be clean,” he said.