Table of Contents
Key Points
- Joseph Siaw Agyepong seeks partnerships in Kenya to boost sanitation and job creation through Zoomlion’s waste management model.
- Environment ministry orders technical reviews to possibly adopt Jospong’s model into national Extended Producer Responsibility programs.
- Jospong inks waste management deals in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and The Gambia, promoting African-led environmental and economic solutions.
Ghanaian businessman Joseph Siaw Agyepong, founder and executive chairman of the Accra-based Jospong Group of Companies, is stepping up his efforts to expand across Africa. His latest stop is Kenya, where he's pursuing new partnerships aimed at tackling waste management and creating jobs.
Last week, Agyepong met with Mombasa County Governor Abdullswamad Sherrif Nassir to discuss a waste management collaboration through Zoomlion Ghana Limited, one of Jospong’s key subsidiaries. The initiative focuses on improving sanitation in Mombasa while supporting local economic growth. It builds on similar agreements Jospong has already signed this year in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and The Gambia.
Kenya eyes Zoomlion’s sanitation model
Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Dr. Deborah Mlongo Barasa, has also thrown her weight behind Zoomlion’s approach. Following talks in Nairobi, she directed the National Environment Management Authority to begin technical assessments, with a view to incorporating Jospong’s solutions into Kenya’s Extended Producer Responsibility framework.
Agyepong said the group’s goal is to “turn sanitation challenges into engines of opportunity,” by investing in skills development and building systems led by Africans for African communities. Zoomlion’s model, already in use across Ghana and 11 other African countries—as well as parts of Asia—centers on recycling, composting, and job creation.
Ghana’s green vision goes continental
Over the past two decades, Agyepong has built Jospong into one of Ghana’s most diversified companies, with operations spanning sanitation, finance, technology, and the automotive industry. In Ghana alone, the group runs 58 waste management sites and 16 recycling and composting facilities. That experience is now being exported across Africa, with Burkina Faso the latest to tap into the model.
Earlier this year, Jospong finalized a deal with authorities in Burkina Faso to develop a full-cycle waste management system, from collection to recycling and final treatment, tailored to the country’s environmental needs. The partnership was cemented during a state visit by Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo to Burkina Faso in March, underscoring the growing collaboration between the two nations.
Agyepong builds pan-African sanitation empire
The Burkina Faso deal came on the heels of a major deal in Nigeria. In Lagos, Zoomlion is working with the state government to overhaul waste disposal systems in one of Africa’s largest cities. The plan includes shutting down major dumpsites and building two Transfer Loading Stations at Olusosun and Solous III, with a focus on recycling and resource recovery.
In The Gambia, officials signed on after touring Jospong’s operations in Ghana. That agreement was described by Gambian representatives as “an African solution to an African challenge”—a phrase that has come to define Agyepong’s vision: finding practical, homegrown answers to the continent’s growing waste problem.
