{"id":29405,"date":"2026-10-02T15:41:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/?p=29405"},"modified":"2026-10-02T15:41:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:41:04","slug":"haroun-mahamat-adoum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/alumni\/west-african-alumni\/haroun-mahamat-adoum","title":{"rendered":"Haroun Mahamat Adoum Is Transforming Waste Management in Chad for a Cleaner Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

After completing his master’s studies in Cyprus, Haroun Mahamat Adoum<\/strong><\/a> returned home having experienced cities where organised waste collection and sanitation were part of everyday urban life. Back in Chad, he saw a very different reality: communities dealing with unmanaged waste and limited access to structured collection services.<\/p>\n

The contrast stayed with him.<\/p>\n

Rather than treating waste as simply an environmental problem, Haroun Mahamat Adoum<\/strong> saw an opportunity to build a service that could improve urban sanitation while creating employment and laying the groundwork for recycling.<\/p>\n

Essa vis\u00e3o tornou-se The First Waste Management<\/strong>, a growing environmental services company providing household waste collection in N’Djamena and working towards a more sustainable approach to waste management in Chad.<\/p>\n

Turning an everyday problem into an enterprise<\/h2>\n

Waste management may not immediately seem like an area for entrepreneurship, but for Haroun, the need was clear.<\/p>\n

As cities grow, so does the volume of waste they produce. Without reliable collection systems, rubbish can accumulate in residential communities, affecting the cleanliness of neighbourhoods and creating wider environmental and public health concerns.<\/p>\n

Haroun’s experience abroad gave him a practical reference point for what organised waste management could look like.<\/p>\n

He returned with the conviction that Chad needed businesses capable of providing structured services rather than relying solely on informal or inconsistent approaches.<\/p>\n

The result was The First Waste Management<\/strong>, built around a straightforward proposition: make waste collection more accessible, organised and reliable for households.<\/p>\n

From an idea with no equipment to a working waste collection service<\/h2>\n

The First Waste Management started with little more than Haroun’s vision.<\/p>\n

Before joining the Programa de Empreendedorismo da Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Tony Elumelu<\/strong><\/a>, the business had no revenue, equipment or operational infrastructure<\/strong>. Turning the concept into a functioning service therefore required both financial resources and the business knowledge to establish a sustainable operating model.<\/p>\n

Today, the company provides door-to-door household waste collection<\/strong> em N’Djamena’s 4th arrondissement<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Residents can subscribe to the service for 500 CFA per household<\/strong>, giving them access to a more structured way of disposing of household waste.<\/p>\n

The business has also created its first jobs, growing to a team of five employees<\/strong>, including one woman.<\/p>\n

While household collection is the company’s starting point, Haroun’s ambitions extend further. He is working towards introducing recycling initiatives<\/strong> that can recover useful materials from collected waste, reduce environmental pollution and create additional economic value from resources that would otherwise be discarded.<\/p>\n

How the Tony Elumelu Foundation helped Haroun Mahamat Adoum move from vision to action<\/h2>\n

For Haroun, turning an environmental idea into a functioning business required more than identifying a problem. He needed the capital, entrepreneurial knowledge and support network to build the foundations of the company.<\/p>\n

Em 2021<\/strong>, he joined the Programa de Empreendedorismo da Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Tony Elumelu<\/strong>, receiving US$5 000 em capital inicial<\/strong>, alongside business training, mentorship and access to the Foundation’s pan-African entrepreneurial network.<\/p>\n

The support helped move The First Waste Management from concept to operation.<\/p>\n

Haroun used the seed capital to acquire essential equipment, launch household waste collection and recruit his first employees. The Foundation’s training also strengthened his understanding of business planning, operations and growth management.<\/p>\n

The programme’s value extended beyond the funding itself. Through mentorship and connection to a wider community of African entrepreneurs, Haroun gained access to perspectives and knowledge that could support him as he navigated the challenges of building an emerging environmental services business.<\/p>\n

Building a business around cleaner communities<\/h2>\n

The significance of The First Waste Management goes beyond the collection of household rubbish.<\/p>\n

For communities, reliable waste collection can make everyday life more organised and contribute to cleaner residential environments. For the business itself, the model creates opportunities to build an emerging environmental services industry in Chad.<\/p>\n

Employment is another part of that equation.<\/p>\n

As the company grows, opportunities can emerge across collection, logistics, administration, recycling and other areas of waste management. Haroun’s early decision to build a formal enterprise around waste services therefore creates a foundation for economic activity alongside its environmental objectives.<\/p>\n

His planned move into recycling could take that model further by treating waste not simply as something to remove, but as a resource that can be recovered, processed and reused.<\/p>\n

That shift\u2014from waste disposal to resource recovery\u2014is central to the longer-term opportunity Haroun sees for the business.<\/p>\n

A bigger vision for waste management in Chad<\/h2>\n

Haroun Mahamat Adoum’s ambition is not limited to one neighbourhood in N’Djamena.<\/p>\n

He plans to expand The First Waste Management<\/strong> into other major cities across Chad while developing recycling facilities and community education programmes around responsible waste disposal and waste segregation.<\/p>\n

The objective is to build a more integrated waste management model\u2014one that combines collection, environmental awareness and resource recovery.<\/p>\n

For a country where structured waste management remains an emerging area, that represents an opportunity to build the sector alongside the growth of its cities.<\/p>\n

Haroun’s journey also illustrates how entrepreneurship can emerge from personal experience. His exposure to organised sanitation systems abroad did not simply change his perspective on waste; it helped him recognise a service gap that could be addressed through a locally built business.<\/p>\n

The road ahead for Haroun Mahamat Adoum<\/h2>\n

The First Waste Management is still at an early stage, but its direction is clear.<\/p>\n

Haroun wants to expand household collection, introduce recycling and build systems that can serve communities at a larger scale. His longer-term ambition is to contribute to sustainable urban sanitation across Chad and position the country as a stronger example of environmental entrepreneurship in Central Africa.<\/p>\n

For Haroun Mahamat Adoum, cleaner cities are not an abstract environmental goal. They are the result of practical systems, reliable services and people willing to build them.<\/p>\n

Through The First Waste Management, he is turning that belief into a business\u2014one household, one employee and one cleaner community at a time.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After completing his master’s studies in Cyprus, Haroun Mahamat Adoum returned home having experienced cities where organised waste collection and sanitation were part of everyday urban life. Back in Chad, he saw a very different reality: communities dealing with unmanaged waste and limited access to structured collection services. The contrast stayed with him. Rather than …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":29415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[366,20],"tags":[566],"class_list":["post-29405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-west-african-alumni","category-articles","tag-empoweredbytef"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29416,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405\/revisions\/29416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tonyelumelufoundation.org\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}