ISSUE 48/DEC2022 - Flipbook - Page 58
Africa’s Most Influential Women | EVERYDAY HEROES
Isatou
“Queen of
Recycling”
Ceesay
THE GAMBIA
Founder: Women’s Initiative Gambia and
Njau Recycling Group
ACTIVISM: Climate Champion
Ceesay is an example of trampling all odds.
25 years ago, she founded the Njau Recycling
Group in the Gambia. A community recycling
initiative that confronted its devastating plastic
pollution problem and turned the waste into
wealth. Ceesay who had dropped out of school
at a tender age mobilized her community to
counter environmental degradation and turn it
into an economic opportunity. Today Ceesay
is a household name not just in The Gambia
but across the continent, as the “Queen of
Recycling”. In addition, she has also set up the
Women’s Initiative Gambia (WIG) a thriving
social enterprise which helps financially poor
women in The Gambia to improve their skills
and acquire income-generating activities, that
help improve their standard of living. Although
initially the initiatives the women undertook
were plastic recycling activities, the initiative
has since grown beyond that to include
other areas of recycling — such as briquette
production from discarded groundnut and
coconut shells and bag production from used
rice bags. Today, hundreds of Gambian women,
youth and disabled groups across the country
are benefiting from WIG.
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New African Woman
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