Alieu Sowe has a vision to clean up the environment in The Gambia while supporting the local community and substantially contributing to the economy.
After returning from a hospitality career in Dubai in 2017, he founded The Gambia's first and only commercial scale plastic recycling enterprise and set about collecting plastics waste, raising awareness in the community, and building his team, with full activities launched in 2019.
Driven by a determination to end plastic pollution in his country, he has worked tenaciously to develop his business in an environment that has little formal waste management capacity. Alieu will share his perspective on working in plastic recycling in a resource constrained environment with a small and mainly rural population, little industrial demand for recycled plastics, poor road networks and a challenging economic backdrop.
He will share his experience and advice for other small scale plastic recycling enterprises in the Global South as we look to the future with hope and shared passion for a clean environment.