The Construction of Household Waste Territories in Yaounde: A Centre-Periphery Analysis

Abstract

This contribution engages an analysis of the complementarity relationships in local waste management to the requirement of a coherent urban governance that is informed by the theoretical approach of the centre-periphery relationship. It is interested in the essence of the construction of the central and peripheral territories of household waste as a result of the processes and logics of central and peripheral actor figures. The choice of the study area was made in response to the objectives of analyzing the logics of spatialized actors and observing the practices of household waste circulation in these different spaces. We analyze two scales of entry: the Yaounde urban community and the district councils [of Yaounde 6 and 3] that make up the community, which are more marked by a strong pre-collection and collection of household waste by the private sector on the one hand, as well as Hysacam. Data collection was based on a variety of institutional and scientific documentary sources and on non-structured interviews with officials and non-officials. The Yaounde Urban Council (YUC), pre-collection operators, NGOs and waste collection companies-PAN and Hysacam constitute sites of investigation.