INSIGHT: Tanzania’s plastic bags ban part of a growing trend across Africa

LONDON (ICIS)–Tanzania will implement a plastics bag ban on 1 June, joining many other African countries in attempts to tackle plastic pollution.

All plastic bags, regardless of thickness, will be prohibited from being imported, exported, manufactured, sold, stored, or supplied for use in Tanzania.

Visitors to the 57m people-strong east African country have been instructed to remove plastic bags from their luggage before travelling.

The Tanzania plastic bags ban will be stringently enforced due to a combination of the country’s forceful President John Magufuli and lack of domestic industry, according to Pritish Behuria, a Hallsworth Research Fellow at the UK’s University of Manchester.

Behuria has a particular interest in how developing countries’ governments have dealt with the challenges associated with contemporary capitalism, and has published a paper assessing the efficacy of plastic bag bans in other African countries.

“If [Magufuli] wants to implement it, it will be,” he said in an interview with ICIS.

“Magufuli’s government is not anti-business … but it has been reducing the power of business.”

Behuria’s paper on plastic bag bans focused on the interaction between government and business.

Business exerts its power either through instrumental power – direct actions, such as lobbying and campaign funding – and structural power, which refers to investment decisions that a company may make in a country.

Tanzania’s government recent strong stance against the power of business and lack of reliance on funding from the plastic industry will mean that corporate resistance will be undermined.

The country’s companies have little structural power and are being rebuffed in their attempts to apply instrumental power.

“The government narrative was that taxes weren’t being collected, [that there was] a lot of tax evasion, that they weren’t investing in infrastructure. The state in now intervening, clamping down on tax collection,” said Behuria.

This would stand in contrast to Kenya, which strictly enforced its plastic bags ban last year after a decade of failed attempts.

As Kenya is the point of origin for most raw plastic material in the region, its manufacturing group the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) is far stronger than in neighbouring countries.

Calls from the wider population proved a tipping point, after strong pressure from local activists as well as from the UN’s Environment Programme.

REGIONAL PRESSURE
The East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organisation which has proven an important force in the spread of plastic bags bans across the region.

The EAC is composed of six countries in the African Great Lakes region – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda – which together combine a population of 170m.

Some countries in west Africa have also implemented plastics bans, or are mulling to do so.

Uganda is the only country left in the EAC without an effective ban despite policy having been proposed in 2009, in 2015 and in 2018. Each time, however, strong business opposition and a weak and divided Ugandan Parliament reduced the power of the bill.

“The only market for [polyethylene (PE) films] in east Africa is Uganda. I don’t think there is any other possibility,” said a Kenya based trader.

“All the high density polyethylene [HDPE] and linear low density polyethylene [LLDPE] volumes will go down [after the Tanzanian ban comes into force]. It will have a huge impact,” the trader added.

The enforcement actions taken by the Tanzanian government so far can potentially be attributed to commitments made to the EAC.

“East Africa is quite interesting, how there is a consensus between countries. The pressure [on Tanzania] has been pretty consistent from Rwanda,” added University of Manchester’s Behuria.

Tanzania has been identified as the source for much of the smuggled plastic in neighbouring countries such as Rwanda, a country that has been “quite ahead” on ecological matters, according to the researcher.

Rwanda is trying to pursue a tourism- and services-based economy, and part of that would be a focus on cleaning up its image, especially in the capital Kigali.

As such, illicit plastics would be a particular problem.

ALTERNATIVES
Tanzania stands in an advantageous position of being able to fund alternative industries which could replace plastic bags, with established plastic bags producers potential being able to shift their production.

“I don’t know if alternative investment is present there in policy, but Tanzania would be well placed to do that – it has a big domestic market and a centralised state,” said Behuria, pictured.

Other east African countries, however, have not done much to facilitate alternative industries following their own bans, added the researcher, which led to factories being permanently shut.

“It is a tough situation. We are between a rock and a hard place,” a Kenyan trader said last year following the plastics ban enforcement in that country.

Local converters tend to not rely only on plastic film production so they can survive the loss of one of their profit streams. Others have tried to adopt a greener approach.

“Some have tried to move into recycling. A Rwandan company got funding from a multi-lateral development bank, for instance. There are opportunities [for alternatives],” said Behuria.

There has also been development of thicker bags that would bypass the conditions of these bans.

“They want to make a heavy bag [which is] made of low density polyethylene [LDPE],” said a Kenyan trader.

“They still have volumes in hand,” it added.

FUTURE
Developing countries forged a path on plastic pollution that more developed nations are only now beginning to catch up with.

“Developing countries have been ahead of implementing harsher bans and penalties. Some argue that it has been more so in the southern hemisphere, where industry is less organised,” said Behuria.

According to him, this process has accelerated in recent years but does not necessarily mean that the number of effective bans will snowball.

“It really depends on what political pressures look like in different countries, how much they require plastics, and what kind of action each government takes – this is quite a country-specific issue,” he added.

Even in this relatively small grouping of countries, implementation and enforcement has varied massively, depending on pressure from business, local and external issues.

In reality, the success of a country’s policies on plastic depend on local factors more than societal pressure.

The EAC-led experiment may give hints on what to do – and what not to do – when it comes to full or partial plastics bans, which are only set to increase in coming decades.

Pictured: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city
Pictures sources: Charles Bowman/Robert Harding/Shutterstock and University of Manchester

By Ben Lake