Making Extended Producer Responsibility work: financing Rwanda's digital afterlife

The economic stakes of Rwanda’s e-waste gap

In a crowded Kigali repair hub, Mbanabo Mushumba Eric breaks apart expired computers and damaged televisions with his bare hands. To recover copper, he burns cable insulation in the open air. “Sometimes I feel dizzy, but this is how I earn a living,” he says.

His experience reveals environmental exposure and a failure to capture value. Once a device breaks, responsibility fragments: households store it, repairers recover immediate value, and hazardous residues become costly liabilities for the environment and people’s health. In 2022, Rwanda generated 10 million kilograms of e-waste, while only 2 million kilograms were formally collected and recycled. Four-fifths therefore remained outside formal capture, limiting safe treatment and the supply of recoverable materials to legitimate enterprises.

The economics reach beyond Rwanda. Globally, e-waste is growing five times faster than documented recycling. Equipment discarded in 2022 contained an estimated USD 91 billion worth of metals, including USD 19 billion in copper and USD 15 billion in gold. Formal “urban mining” reclaimed about USD 28 billion, while USD 62 billion in recoverable resources remained unaccounted for. This places e-waste within industrial policy. Predictable volumes can support refurbishment, dismantling and more advanced recovery. When equipment is treated unsafely or leaves as lightly processed scrap, higher-value processing and jobs accrue elsewhere.

Rwanda already has important components of a recovery market. Its 2016 National E-Waste Management Policy sets the direction; the 2018 regulation placed e-waste under RURA and introduced extended producer responsibility. Campaigns, collection points and a government-backed recycling partnership have created the first practical capacity. The remaining gap is a financing architecture connecting these assets to every producer and product entering the market.

From institutional design to operating proof

Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, supplies that logic. Businesses placing electrical and electronic equipment on the market assume financial, organizational and reporting responsibility at end of life. In Rwanda, that duty would largely fall across approximately 2500 producers, mainly importers and distributors. A collective Producer Responsibility Organization, housed through the Business Research Center under the Private Sector Federation and called the Rwanda Electronics PRO (REPRO), pools contributions, maintains the producer register, contracts licensed collectors and recyclers, finances awareness, and reports to RURA. It could link repairers and waste pickers to organized collection networks and licensed recycling facilities, supporting safer handling of discarded equipment while creating more predictable demand for recovery services.

Considerable groundwork is already in place. Government institutions, the Private Sector Federation and international and local partners have clarified roles, developed a producer registration journey, explored the fee model and advanced revised RURA and RICA instruments. With financial and technical support from the African Development Bank’s Africa Circular Economy Facility and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Private Sector Federation is testing how this system works in practice. The operational pilot began in late 2025 to prepare the first PRO business plan, establish collection arrangements, find and contract licensed service providers, test awareness activities, and compare volumes and expenditure. It will generate Rwanda-specific evidence on collection costs, network reach, viable fees and achievable targets, shaping both a durable PRO and a market in which recovery firms can invest.

Regulation gives a market signal

Africa’s formal e-waste management market is projected to grow from approximately USD 10.2 billion in 2026 to USD 25.2 billion by 2032, an annual growth rate of about 11.2 percent. Rising device use is driving the volumes. Regulation will determine where and how efficiently the resulting value is captured. Without organized domestic systems, discarded electronics can continue moving through unsafe informal channels or leave African markets before the higher-value stages of refurbishment, component recovery and material processing occur.

For Rwanda, the revised regulations therefore carry an economic signal that extends beyond compliance. Mandatory producer registration and contributions would convert potential opportunity into a funded value chain. REPRO would gain predictable income to expand collection infrastructure and contract collectors and recyclers, while licensed operators would have greater confidence to invest in equipment, skills, and processing capacity. Without universal participation, responsible firms would finance the system while competitors free-ride, leaving the recovery market underfunded and its material supply unreliable.

The regulatory framework should also connect collection with Rwanda’s industrial ambition. Aggregating traceable volumes can create the feedstock required for domestic refurbishment, dismantling and, over time, more advanced material recovery. If collected equipment leaves as lightly processed scrap, much of the value, employment and foreign-exchange benefit is realized elsewhere. The regulation must provide the obligations, standards, data and volume certainty that allow such an industry to develop.

The REPRO pilot can help establish realistic fees, operating costs and collection targets. The revised regulatory framework would clarify which businesses must participate, their financing and reporting obligations, and REPRO’s role in organizing collective compliance.

Putting this framework into effect, with coordinated implementation and enforcement, would help Rwanda build a producer-financed recovery market in which collection and recycling businesses have greater confidence to invest.