Among other African cities, in terms of solid waste management (SWM), Harare has been ranked as one of the poorest. The municipality struggles to efficiently provide SWM services to its residents. Considering that SWM systems are complex, the individual behaviour of its components (waste generation, collection, and disposal) determines the overall performance of the system. This mini-review thus aims to understand the management system of the urban city’s biggest source of solid waste which is household solid waste (HSW). The systematic literature review methodology using NVIVO was used to analyse the literature. Out of a selected sample size of 500 journal articles, 26 were selected based on their relevance to the study. The uncertainty of the data provided by the Harare City Council (HCC) and of HSW generation data harvested in the literature was calculated. According to the HCC data records, Harare has an average daily waste generation per capita of on average 0.38±0.1 kg producing about 207, 635, 294±56, 027, 040 kg of HSW generated annually. With the waste collection efficiency in Harare at about 72.4%±7.5%, the city collects approximately 170, 385, 600±33 384 209 kg of HSW annually. All the collected HSW is disposed of in the city’s major MSW dumpsite called Pomona and only about 23, 498, 400±3, 988, 817 kg MSW is recovered annually with the average recovery efficiency at around 9.5%±2.8%, where most of the waste recovery is done by the waste pickers.

Managing household solid waste (HSW) has gone beyond what the Harare local government can handle. Inadequate knowledge of the interactions existing between issues that affect the efficient running of waste management systems is one of the major hindrances in waste management planning in developing countries like Zimbabwe. The complexity of the waste management system for a given municipal area needs to be identified and understood to generate appropriate and efficient waste management strategies. Network analysis (NA) is a methodology extensively used in research to help reveal a comprehensive picture of the relationships and factors related to a particular phenomenon. The methodology reduces the intricacy of large systems such as waste management to smaller and more understandable structures. In this study, NA, which was done mainly using the R software environment, showed a result of 1.5% for network density, thus signifying that for Harare, waste management strategies need to be ‘seeded’ in various parts of the system. The Pareto principle and the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) concept were applied to suggest the issues to prioritize and generate strategies that could potentially affect significant change to the city’s waste management system. The key issues identified, in their order of importance, are an increase in uncollected waste, low waste collection efficiency, increase in illegal waste dumping, the deteriorating country’s economy, reduced municipal financial capacity, reduced municipal workforce capacity, inadequate or unreliable waste data, increase in waste volume, increase in the number of street vendors, no waste planning and monitoring unit, no engineered landfills in the city, increase in waste collection pressure, low waste collection frequency, increase in the unemployment rate, reduced municipal technical capacity, few waste collection vehicles, limited vehicles maintenance, distinct socio-economic classes, high vehicles breakdown, and increase in population.

Household solid waste (HSW) is the largest municipal solid waste (MSW) produced in Harare. This type of waste is poorly managed, driven by various factors. To inform future studies towards designing more informed solutions to HSW management in the city, this literature study was formulated. The review aims to uncover the causes of poor HSW management in the city.<br/> The systematic review methodology using NVIVO was used to develop the review. The results showed that the most reported causes of poor HSW management and waste management system inefficiencies in Harare are increase in population and population density, poor formal solid waste disposal, increase in waste volumes, informal waste disposal, low waste collection frequency and efficiency, municipal incapacitation, among others. Future studies can utilize these results to estimate the complexity of this phenomenon and thus propose appropriate solutions.