Status of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Africa

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has received attention as a tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of products and services. In the last 20 years, research on the topic has increased, and now more than 25,000 articles are related to LCA in scientific journals databases such as the Scopus database; however, the concept is relatively new in Africa, where the number of networks has been highlighted to be very low when compared to the other regions. This paper focuses on a review of life cycle assessments conducted in Africa over the last 20 years. It aims at highlighting the current research gap for African LCA. A total of 199 papers were found for the whole continent; this number is lower than that for both Japan and Germany (more than 400 articles each) and nearly equal to developing countries such as Thailand. Agriculture is the sector which received the most attention, representing 53 articles, followed by electricity and energy (60 articles for the two sectors). South Africa (43), Egypt (23), and Tunisia (19) were the countries where most of the research was conducted. Even if the number of articles related to LCA have increased in recent years, many steps still remain. For example, establishing a specific life cycle inventory (LCI) database for African countries or a targeted ideal life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method. Several African key sectors could also be assessed further.

Estimating the Ecological Performance of Water and Wastewater Treatment in Africa: A Meta‐Analysis

“…3. This trend aligns with those of LCAs in the African water sector, as depicted in a recent review [16] of all LCAs in Africa. Likewise, there was a considerable change in the water metric data within this timeframe.…”

Environmental and economic performances of municipal solid waste management strategies based on LCA method: A case study of kinshasa

“…This number of LCA articles is relatively small compared to other non-African developing countries. Moreover, no LCA studies have been conducted in the waste management sector or any other sector in D.R.C despite the rapid population growth implying an increase in waste production [ 59 ].…”

Utilisation of Life Cycle Assessment in Environmental Management: Review

“…Life Cycle Assessment is an evaluation of relevant environmental impacts of a material, process or product across its life from raw material extraction, manufacturing, transport, use and disposal (Karkour, et al 2021;Madushele 2017;Dong, et al 2013). The broad scope of LCA is aimed at reducing the environmental impacts by shifting the focus from end of pipe solutions to dealing with them before they are manifested (Mazzi 2020).…”