Turning Waste into Opportunity: An Entrepreneur's Vision for Change

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: A lot of people are coming up with products to sell to people. But I’ll advise the young entrepreneurs to come up with solutions to a particular problem, that problem that is a pain to people.

Shanti Selk: This young woman who wants to transform the world is Juveline Ngum Ngwa from Cameroon. She's passionate about her company, Bleaglee, which won an award at the YA Startup Challenge, a competition that allows young entrepreneurs with innovative solutions and business concepts to be rewarded and supported in their project.

Let's listen to her in the Making a Difference podcast. Thank you for joining today. And before talking about BleagLea, let's talk about you. Tell me, what is your background story?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I grew up from the western part of Cameroon and I migrated to Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. And while I was very young, I experienced a lot of flooding and other climate scenarios caused by poor waste disposal that was clogging drainage channels. And from there I decided to find a solution that could solve these multi-climate hazard scenarios and that's where I came up with my company, BleagLee Waste Management and Recycling Company.

Shanti Selk: So now I do have a lot of questions for you. I understood a little bit of - already - how you came up with this business idea. Can you be more specific? Maybe the exact moment you had this idea, “Oh, I need to go to have a company”. 

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: At the age of 12, I was affected by respiratory issues that were caused by poor waste disposal because you see that a lot of people are burning their waste in open areas. Burning of waste releases toxic gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and black carbon, which are the greatest contributors to global warming and climate change. And then the second scenario we discovered or found out is that most of the flooding being caused in Cameroon, were as a result of poor waste disposals in drainage channels and the water could not easily pass through the drains because they were blocked or clogged by waste and this caused flooding. I remember there was, around the age of 12 or 15, my mother had to lose some properties at home because of the flooding. Yeah, and all of these issues or most of these issues were caused by poor waste disposal, especially by communities who were unaware of the scenarios that were happening.

Shanti Selk: Okay, I understand better now. And what about the name? What does this name mean to you?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: BleagLee is a short form for Blessed Eagles, which means that the eagle is the bird that flies very, very high and far. So I believe that the BleagLee is a company that is out to go very far and very high into the skies, to make the skies very clean from pollution.

Shanti Selk: Nice. I like the idea. How does your solution exactly work from a technical point of view, then?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: From a technical point of view, we are using software or drones to quickly inspect poor waste disposal on drainage channels and other physical site. So our software guides drones along trajectories that finds poor waste disposal from collected images and outputs reports, providing early warning to flooding and other climate scenarios caused by poor waste disposal. It's an artificial intelligence software that when we get the data from the software, it can be shared with government, city councils, municipalities to help them to make better decisions on how to schedule site cleaning, how to - where to -- place trash cans and how to educate communities about the benefits of proper waste disposal.

Shanti Selk: Was it an innovation or an existing waste management process?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: The existing waste management process is more of, I would say, the kind of traditional way where we have informal waste collectors who have to rummage around the cities every day in search of waste. Why? Because they want to sell the waste to, to recycling companies and have additional incomes. But for us, we, we are formalising the whole sector by integrating them, we are training them, providing personal protective equipment for them to work formally with us in collection of waste and then we sell to recycling companies and they receive a portion of the recycling revenue.

Shanti Selk: You are listening to Making a Difference, the story of a vibrant Africa.

So you’ve implemented already. Do you have any figures on the results your company has achieved or the saving it has made?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: Yes, on the side of employment that's sustainable job creation, we have been able to train over 402 people in Cameroon. Yes, on a waste collection, either online or offsite, where we train them on collecting waste and selling to recycling companies, or collecting waste and recycling into marketable products, which they can use or sell. So when we train these young people, they become technically competent to produce additional jobs within the economy.

Shanti Selk: Great. That's very interesting. So who are exactly your customers? Who are you selling your solution to?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: So the very first customers we are having are the government city councils and municipalities who can get the data from our software. It helps them make better decisions on where to place trash cans, how to schedule site cleaning because they can see the areas of poor waste disposal through our software. And then when we collect the wastes together with these informal waste collectors we have integrated, the waste is sorted in our factories and sold to recycling companies. And in the future, we hope to establish processing factories where we process the waste ourselves rather than selling to the recycling companies.

Shanti Selk: So at what rates do you need to offer your services to be profitable?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: We just need… To become profitable, we just need to make sure that we reach as many people as possible, be it from the government sectors or the municipalities, city councils, as well as the waste management companies. That means the more we increase our client base, the more we become profitable.

Shanti Selk: I'm sure you're very proud of what you've achieved so far. Do you have a specific thing that you are proud of?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: The very specific thing I'm proud of is the issue of women being part of my team. Yes, I'll say my team is made up of approximately 70% of women. Yeah, because women are very conscious of climate change adaptation and resilience. We always; we often find them either... they are left behind, they are not seated on the tables, sometimes they don't find these opportunities. Yeah. And so I'm very confident of the fact that my company is giving priority to these young, vulnerable women who have been affected by climate change so that they can contribute in the climate change adaptation landscape.

Shanti Selk: So you are a woman yourself. Are you doing all this by yourself?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: No, I'm doing this with a team of 19 permanent and the waste collectors that we have trained and integrated them. We work with them on a part time or full-time basis. It's when we identify waste, we work with them to collect the waste.

Shanti Selk: So now that you're in the Youth Adapt challenge 2021 finalists cohort, what support are you receiving?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: The Youth Adapt 2021 cohort, we are receiving financial support and technical assistance. And the financial support, we received funding of $100,000 and this funding went ahead to support in the construction of a larger waste processing factory. It also helped us to purchase two larger waste trucks that would… would collect waste in additional areas and this has increased productivity and revenues. And, with the funding as well, we're able to provide training to over 306 people on how to collect waste which they can sell to recycling companies or convert into additional marketable products, which and they can use or they can sell. And we recruited five additional full-time workers through the Youth Adapt programme, and we are also updating our software to include new features like the GPS. technology to help waste truck drivers optimise routes and reduce fuel consumption. And on the technical side, we received coaching, capacity building and mentorship from international experts on leadership and business development. This was through a one-year leadership program where the Youth Adapt provided us a international expert who would train us and we received advanced knowledge and leadership development both personally and professionally. And through this Youth Adept, we also received international recognition, especially from investors, because investors had to reach out to us after the international recognition and after finding out our drones technology, they reach out to us to invest. And we are on the pipeline to raising additional $500,000 that will help us to expand into additional territory.

Shanti Selk: I hope you will. So what are your plans? How do you see - actually - your future?

Juveline Ngum Ngwa: The future, we see it to be a technology future in Africa. We are hoping to expand to Dakar, Senegal, by the end of 2023 and we are hoping to establish country offices where we have the drones operators that will take the area images and then our technical team will read the images and then provide the data to the governments, city councils and municipalities in African countries. I think I'll have an advice for young entrepreneurs, especially those in the climate change, that a lot of people are coming up with products to sell to people. But I’ll advise the young entrepreneurs to come up with solutions to a particular problem, that problem that is a pain to people, bring out a solution to that problem. And when you bring out the solution to that problem, every other thing that you've been dreaming of would actually follow you.

Shanti Selk: Thank you, Juveline, for your vision of a cleaner future, for showing us how you acted in front of climate change challenges in your community and how to make a business out of an idea. And maybe this will inspire more than one or two.

This was Juveline Ngum Ngwa speaking to Shanti Selk on Making a Difference, The African Development Bank's podcast; the story of a vibrant Africa. Stay tuned for other episodes on our website, on YouTube, and follow us via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can leave us your comments and suggest themes for future episodes.

This podcast episode has been recorded during the African Development Bank Group's Annual Meetings in May 2023.