Urban solid waste management (USWM) is an important challenge for Mozambican municipalities against a general background of population growth and urban expansion. In most cities, urban solid waste (USW) collection services are not evenly distributed across all neighbourhoods, leading to increased inequalities. For example, urban centres are advantaged over poorer outlying areas. The officials in charge of urban solid waste management do not have the resources and tools to analyse the real situation in each area and thus improve service planning. Furthermore, this poor management of USW in large cities has negative environmental and health consequences*, further increasing the vulnerability of already disadvantaged populations. Urban solid waste management in Mozambique therefore faces important challenges in terms of functional improvement (coverage rate, worker productivity, ecological efficiency), financing (types of resources, collection methods, budget balance of the sector) and, more broadly, organisation (scale and nature of actors, respective shares of market and public service principles).
MOPA is an inclusive digital platform for coordinating the activities of waste collection actors to optimise solid waste management in cities and, in a participatory manner, improve and sanitise the urban and peri-urban environment. Already used by the city of Maputo, it is intended for all managers of technical services in municipalities to create simple and instantaneous lines of communication between city residents and the multiple actors in the sector. The platform displays on a map the reports issued by neighbourhood control officers and residents (presence of a dump, full container, etc.), and notifies by SMS in real time the municipality, the sectoral managers of the neighbourhood/district concerned and the formal and informal collection actors directly concerned by the location and type of intervention.
To ensure wider access and better mobilisation, MOPA uses three technologies: USSD, a mobile application for smartphones and a website. Once a problem has been reported, the person automatically receives an intervention number to track the progress of to track the progress of their report and intervention operations.
- 120 neighbourhood representatives have been trained in the use and dissemination of the MOPA system
- 50 technicians from the municipalities of Beira, Nampula and Maputo were trained in the system and the MOPA platform 50% were women
