If you’ve enjoyed reading this case and want to dive deeper, we’d love to hear from you and we will connect you with relevant designers like the team, who worked on this project Contact Us
Afriplastics Challenge: providing innovation support to African entrepreneurs tackling plastic waste problems.
- Lisanne
- Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia.
- Challenge Works
- February 20, 2026
Situation
Challenge Works set out to strengthen innovators addressing Africa’s plastic waste crisis across three strands: scaling plastic collection, developing circular business models, and driving behaviour change. Prior to programme delivery, Proportion Global had already supported the design of the challenge itself through extensive design research with plastic system actors, generating insights that shaped challenge direction and criteria.
Assignment
Develop and deliver the Innovation and Human Focused support cluster, ensuring semi-finalists and finalists gained the capabilities needed to refine solutions, validate ideas through user engagement, and progress toward commercially viable models.
Approach
Proportion Global created a decentralised, human-centred curriculum grounded in rapid learning cycles. Structured pathways were tailored to each strand, including system mapping, empathy research, ideation, prototyping, user journey development, and pilot planning. Delivery combined group workshops, hackathons, offline coaching, and iterative design cycles to ensure innovators could translate insights into robust solutions.
Result
Participants advanced from assumptions to evidence-based solutions tested with real users. Semi-finalists deepened clarity on core challenges and opportunities, while finalists refined prototypes and executed pilots that strengthened investment readiness. The innovation support cluster contributed to a cohort of ventures better positioned to scale impact across Africa’s plastics ecosystem.