Sustainable Recycling Solutions: Turning Trash into Treasure in Ethiopia with TechnoServe Fellow Nuria Riechenberg
Nuria Riechenberg, a TechnoServe Fellow in 2023, played a pivotal role in the LIWAY Program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There, she created an intervention to address a gap in the recycling value chain, creating sustainable recycling solutions and thousands of jobs. Discover how her experience as a TechnoServe Fellow has impacted her career.
One example of TechnoServe’s dedication to finding sustainable solutions to address poverty is the highly competitive Fellows Program. Since 1996, the program has recruited high-level business professionals from top-tier graduate schools and management consulting firms to lead short-term pro bono projects. Thanks to the skills and time of Fellows, TechnoServe’s teams can scale their productivity and impact in a short amount of time.
Nuria Riechenberg joined the TechnoServe Fellows Program in 2023 to research job creation opportunities for women and youth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She supported TechnoServe’s LIWAY Program and discovered a missing link in the recycling value chain. Based on these findings, Nuria strengthened the plastic waste intervention to connect street collectors with recycling companies, which created jobs, scaled recycling operations, and mitigated the growing amount of waste on the streets of Addis Ababa. She also designed a new intervention in the organic waste sector, turning compost production into new jobs for women and youth. She became an expert in turning trash into treasure – that is, a marketable product sold to waste-recycling centers. With her support, the LIWAY program found sustainable recycling solutions, turning 57.7 metric tons of waste into over 29,000 new jobs for women and youth.
This experience allowed Nuria to transfer her private-sector skills to the public sector, ultimately pivoting her career and deepening TechnoServe’s work. We caught up with Nuria to learn more about her experience as a Fellow.
Leveraging Private Sector Experience
What were you doing before you decided to join the TechnoServe Fellows Program?
I have a mix of public and private sector experience. On the public sector side, I worked for the German Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo and the European Union Delegation to the United Nations in New York. Then, I decided to pivot to the private sector. I worked for Boston Consulting Group in strategy consulting and then in an operational leadership role at Stuart Delivery, a sustainable logistics startup.
Why did you join the Fellows Program?
After starting my career in the public sector, I knew that I ultimately wanted to work in international development. However, I felt I needed to acquire more hard skills before I could make an impactful contribution, so I decided to pursue a career in the private sector first.
After working in the private sector for six years, it felt like the right time to return to development, having learned valuable operations management, analytics, communication, and leadership skills. The Fellows Program at TechnoServe felt like the perfect opportunity to explore the world of development through the lens of an international NGO with a strong focus on private sector development.
Overall, how would you describe your time as a Fellow?
My time as a Fellow was diverse, dynamic, constantly changing, and enriching. It exposed me to many parts of TechnoServe and the broader development work. Overall, it was a challenging and rewarding experience.
The Challenge of Waste Management in Ethiopia
You kickstarted a successful new intervention with the LIWAY program as a Fellow. Tell us about your experience designing and implementing the project. What are some takeaways from that?
It was a very gratifying experience as I witnessed the growth of an idea into something tangible that provided real income opportunities to disadvantaged women and youth in Addis Ababa.
It all started with a market assessment of the waste sector in Addis, showcasing the economic and environmental potential of the organic waste stream. Based on that, I developed a proposal around compost production. Then, I kick-started the project implementation with a small team across the different NGO partners. The main thing I learned was the importance of coupling market data with pragmatic insights from the field to increase a program’s chances of success.
It’s easy to create market assessments from afar, but they are hard to implement if they lack practical applications or key stakeholder endorsements. We decided to launch our intervention because there were already some nascent businesses in the market and strong government interest, which helped propel the intervention forward.
What was the most challenging part of this project?
The fact that we were developing a new market system made this project very challenging. It was difficult to influence, incentivize, and facilitate market actors to build a more efficient market system. The progress was often slow and hard to measure, leading us to try new approaches to managing the program and new approaches to monitoring and evaluation.
Sustainable Recycling Solutions Create Jobs
What was the impact of your fellowship?
The main impact was generating hundreds of jobs and income opportunities for disadvantaged women and youth in Addis Ababa and Sheger City by producing high-quality compost for urban farmers, gardeners, and landscapers.
How does it feel to be part of such an impactful project?
I joined the development sector because I wanted to feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself. It was inspiring to support a program with the ambitious target to create 50,000 new jobs and income opportunities. It made me feel like I was serving a bigger purpose.
Turning Experience into Impact
What is one way that this Fellows project impacted you professionally? How did it impact you personally?
I learned a lot about the end-to-end process of program management in international development, from opportunity assessment and proposal generation to project launch and implementation. In particular, I gained a range of insights into how this sector works in Ethiopia and its opportunities and limitations. After working for TechnoServe, I felt ready to embark on a career in development.
Personally, it allowed me to move to a new place. Having never lived in a developing country before, it exposed me to an enriching cultural experience. I was able to learn about a different country context, which included learning some basic Amharic skills to navigate the complex but beautiful country of Ethiopia.
What are three words that best describe the TechnoServe Fellow experience?
- Eye-opening
- Dynamic
- Inspiring
What are you doing now that your project is finished?
I recently joined the TechnoServe team in Kenya as an Inclusive Business Manager at the Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness Technical Assistance Facility (CASA TAF) program, funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. After Ethiopia, I wanted to continue working in international development in East Africa, so I was lucky to find this opportunity that suited my strategic and operational backgrounds.
Do you have any advice for people who are thinking about participating in the Fellows program?
If you are even slightly curious about international development or social impact, I highly recommend joining the Fellows Program. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a short time commitment, but it has the potential to open your eyes to a completely different sector that plays a key role on the global stage. It also helps you understand the world and how it functions better, which is worth the investment.
With the expertise of over 2,000 TechnoServe Fellows since 1996, TechnoServe has had an increased capacity to create more market opportunities for women and men across the globe. Do you want to be a part of business solutions to poverty? Click here to learn more about the TechnoServe Fellows program or to apply.
