The everyday politics of waste collection practice in Addis Ababa (2003–2009)

This article examines the unique approach the Addis Ababa City Administration put in place to address the city’s municipal solid waste collection problems between 2003 and 2009. During this period, the city administration introduced a variety of governmental technologies to discipline waste as a material and to institute government-initiated cooperative micro-enterprises as a major actor in waste collection. In this article, I examine how the variety of measures the city administration introduced during the waste management reform disciplined waste collectors. I unpack this issue through examining the specific spaces of engagement between waste collectors (formal and informal) and city administration’s representatives by paying close attention to the everyday practices of waste collection. I also examined how the emphasis on reducing unemployment over the idea of creating a clean city can be better explained as a political exercise. Primary data collected included interviews of purposely-selected experts (n=28) and waste collectors (n=42). Secondary data were also consulted. I use the concept of the everyday state and the notion of governmentality for the purpose of examining the intricate social relations that materialized between waste collectors and city administration and how this shaped waste collection spaces and practices. The findings reveal that the city administration was more focused on assisting cooperative micro-enterprises with the aim of reducing unemployment over the idea of creating a clean city. It is also shown that the different governing technologies the city administration employed to discipline waste as a material were in fact aimed at assisting cooperative micro-enterprises and reconfiguring the power relationship between waste governing institutions and waste collectors.