Close the Gap – Refurbishing Electronics to Close the Digital Divide

How to create a successful circular hub for electronics that holistically integrates social and commercial aspects into the model?

In this episode, we speak with Timothy Washira, Operations Manager at Close the Gap’s Circular Economy Hub in Mombasa, Kenya.

Close the Gap first started in Belgium in 2003 with the mission to provide high-quality pre-owned computers and bridge the digital divide. The organization started its first operations in Kenya in 2019 in Nairobi, before moving the Circular Economy Hub to a bigger, state-of-the-art facility in Mombasa in 2020.

The Circular Economy Hub is the logistics backbone for Close the Gap in Kenya. Its focus is on IT Asset Disposition which involves collecting used IT devices from corporate partners in Kenya, conducting data wipe processes; refurbishing or recycling the devices, and deploying the pre-owned high quality devices to impact projects.

Timothy talks about how Close the Gap is driving socio-economic transformation through for example, its incubator space and the BOOST program.

Listen to hear how Close the Gap integrates commercial success with social impact, creating jobs, promoting the circular economy, and empowering over 6 million people with access to technology and skills.

Video Impression

People

Timothy Wachira, Operations Manager at Close the Gap
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-wachira-80294214/

Ian Kiptoo, Operations Manager at Close the Gap
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-kiptoo-966868204/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Circular Economy and Close the Gap
01:34 The Mission of Close the Gap
06:02 E-Waste Management and Digital Divide
08:56 Boost Program and Socio-Economic Impact
12:00 IT Asset Disposition Process
18:10 Refurbishment and Grading Process
23:59 Revenue Models and Partnerships
29:50 Future Plans and Expansion
39:05 Conclusion and Call to Action

About

Close the Gap started in Belgium in 2003 and started its first operations in Kenya in 2019. Close the Gap operates the Circular Economy Hub in Mombasa, which serves as the organisation’s logistical backbone and a blueprint for green technology in Africa.

This cutting-edge facility specialises in IT Asset Disposition (ITAD), collecting used corporate IT equipment, conducting data wiping, and refurbishing devices that is then deployed to bridge the digital divide in local impact projects, such as schools and youth correctional facilities. Beyond hardware, Close the Gap Kenya drives socio-economic transformation through its BOOST+ program, which supports young entrepreneurs and women along the Kenyan coastline with training in digital skills, financial literacy, and business management, and by deploying the Impact Accelerator Fund (IAF) to provide strategic capital and mentorship to innovative startups in sectors like the circular economy and green tech, directly contributing to job creation and boosting the local economy.

Further Links

https://www.mrgreenafrica.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mr-green-trading-africa-kenya-ltd/
https://www.instagram.com/mrgreen_africa/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction to Circular Economy and Close the Gap

Timothy Wachira: Hello Patrick. How are you?

Patrick Hypscher: Hi, Timothy. Good, good. Good to see you. Yeah, yeah. I heard employee number one.

Timothy Wachira: Yes, yes, yes. From the beginning.

Patrick Hypscher: most knowledgeable person in terms of operations at least I guess.

Timothy Wachira: Probably, but we still have a lot more experts as well. Welcome to the second economy hub. Yes.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me. you My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity FM, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models. Welcome back to Circularity FM and our series on circular entrepreneurship in Kenya. For the final episode of this series, we’re taking you to Close the Gap’s Circular Economy Hub in Mombasa. Timothy Rochira, the operations manager at Close the Gap, walks us through the process of tackling e-waste. And he talks about the mission to bridge the digital divide. But before we start, I have an offer for you. If you want to get the actionable one-pager about this conversation, sign up for the Circularity FM newsletter. You can find it at www.circularity.fm ⁓

[00:01:34] The Mission of Close the Gap

Timothy Wachira: Thank you so much, Patrick. My name is Timothy Washira. I am operations manager at Close the Gap’s circular economy hub. I’ve been working with Close the Gap for six years now. I joined in June of 2019 when we were starting the first operations for the circular economy hub back in Nairobi. And then of course we moved end of COVID in 2020 to Mombasa to establish a much bigger facility and what I’d call a state-of-the-art IT asset disposition here in Njongbu which is closer to the port and the airport here in Mombasa. So it’s giving us quite a good position logistically in terms of ⁓ making sure that we are efficient. in our operations and also provide for the socio-economic aspect of Mombasa provide employment to youth and young women. Okay.

Patrick Hypscher: So, technically you have been the first employee of ClosedTheGap here. Yes. And before we look at Kenya, so I learned ClosedTheGap has been around already in Belgium.

Timothy Wachira: Indeed. So Close the Gap was started in Belgium in 2003 by our founder, Olivier van den Eend, as a social enterprise. And the mission that he wanted to achieve was bridging the digital divide by providing high quality pre-owned computers ⁓ to individuals and social enterprises so that he could be able to provide digital skills and IT equipment at a very low cost. So that was his mission when he was starting up the company in 2003 and now in 2019 he came to Kenya and decided to start the circular economy hub. based out of the company that had now grown in Belgium to be a fully fledged IT asset disposition company. And he also purposed to create an environment to innovate and incubate young entrepreneurs by providing them with a co-working space to be able to come in and bring the ideas and actually get investor funding and also training on how best to scale up their businesses. Yes. So ⁓ the circular economy hub, I would describe it as the logistics backbone of Closed The Gap in here in Kenya. And here is where we actually collect used IT devices from partner companies here in Kenya. and we actually take them through what you call a refurbishment process, which entails actual identification of devices and taking them through data wipe processes to remove ⁓ any client data that was there on the device. And essentially, once that is done, we’re able to grade these devices based on their usability and deploy them to our impact projects. And impact projects mostly would be institutions like medical institutions, educational institutions and social enterprises.

Patrick Hypscher: So actually Close the Gap is the, let’s say the overall brand having operations in Belgium and here in Kenya. And the operations is focused on refurbishing ⁓ hardware under the umbrella of the circular economy hub. at the same time, you kind of build an impact and circular economy ecosystem, supporting other entrepreneurs and bringing together investors as sponsors here in Mombasa region in Kenya.

[00:06:02] E-Waste Management and Digital Divide

Timothy Wachira: Yeah, yes indeed. Because we have recognized that e-waste generally is becoming an issue that needs to be dealt with at the beginning. the population here in Kenya, about almost 70 % of the youth, that is 35 years and below, and they are getting… ⁓ more into acquiring digital skills and actually even ⁓ being the own job creators. So there’s a lot of use of IT equipment in Kenya, but what happens to that equipment when it gets to end of life? So essentially we looked at that as one of the missions that we want to ensure that ⁓ e-waste is ⁓ handled safely. So create responsibility through our corporate partners, as well as educational and medical institutions, and even social enterprises. that is one of the missions that we wanted to achieve. And we’re also talking about bridging the digital divide. We are an emerging economy here in Kenya. ⁓ affordability of high quality IT devices sometimes is a challenge because of the cost. So by refurbishing, we are able to provide high quality pre-old computers, what we’d call as nearly new and made in Kenya devices, to individuals at a very low cost. Thus, ⁓ achieving our mission of bridging the digital divide. And of course, this unemployment, we have to see how best we can create employment, especially for the youth and especially women. And Mombasa provided an ideal location to create opportunities for the youth and young women entrepreneurs. close the gap by having the circular economy hub here in Mombasa is able to create impact as well by providing ⁓ incubator space ⁓ and a program we call Boost. So Boost has three pillars. Boost your technology, boost your learning and boost your business. ⁓ Boost your technology ⁓ is used by us to create ⁓ as an initiative to create e-waste awareness. and actually even encourage youth and young women entrepreneurs to get into circular economy. And once they do that, they can now come in and get training in digital skills, as well as other business skills and boost your learning. And later on, even scale up their businesses through a project called Impact Accelerator. and boost your business pillar. So it’s more or less a whole social economic system that we aim at providing impact for. That close the gap.

[00:08:56] Boost Program and Socio-Economic Impact

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, enough for the intro. Let’s look at close the gaps operations.

Timothy Wachira: So it’s a shared space, this compound. have other companies in the compound that deal in other things as well. this is our facility. Okay, so our facility is more or less, we call it an IT as a disposition facility. It was modeled from one of our facilities in Belgium, one that was previously located in Mecklen. And now it’s moved to a location called Konjik, quite bigger. More or less, this is the storage side of our operations. Everything you see on this side is already prepared devices.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so this is like outbound.

Timothy Wachira: Outbound, yes. So it’s prepared, ready for impact deployment. And then we have our operations side where we do the actual IT as in this position. so essentially our process begins by us talking to local partners who have ⁓ used IT equipment that is still serviceable, that is still reusable. And ⁓ once they agree, because we are looking at our model involves us getting equipment donated. Equipment that is at end of life but can still be reused. So donated to us so that you can process it at zero cost to the partner and then we can redeploy it to our impact projects.

Patrick Hypscher: What are the kind of companies that donate the equipment to you?

Timothy Wachira: Yes, so we are looking at corporates, ⁓ educational institutions, medical institutions, and even individuals. So a lot of corporates we work with here in Kenya are mostly the multinationals, because multinationals understand ⁓ end-of-life refurbishment processes and do actually want to dispose their equipment through… companies that are certified to carry out refurbishment and recycling of electronic waste.

Patrick Hypscher: When it comes to data ⁓ destruction, do you include that?

[00:12:00] IT Asset Disposition Process

Timothy Wachira: Yes, so when it comes to data destruction, we use a software called Blanco. Blanco is a software that enables us to actually wipe data on any hard drive or any storage ⁓ drive of any equipment. And we are able actually to provide even a report to the client once the wipe is done. ⁓ This enables us to reuse the device.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so you do like software wiping and not hardware destruction.

Timothy Wachira: Exactly. Yeah, so if you once we wipe the hardware we are able actually now to deploy it with the hardware because destroying the hard drive essentially is more or less getting almost half the cost of the device out of the equipment and by investing in Blanco software we’re able to recover the use of the hard drive without destroying it. Some clients, although insist that we destroy the hard drives based on the sensitivity of the data that was on the hard drives before, but once we sensitize them and we show them that Blanco software is the best software that we can use because you cannot recover any data that was there before, even if you use other software, data recovery software to do that.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, yes. And coming back to the companies, so you cover the whole of Kenya.

Timothy Wachira: Yes, we the whole of Kenya. We talk to companies all over Kenya. We are based here in Mombasa, but initially we had presence in Nairobi. we already created a rapport with them and ⁓ we keep on constantly following up with clients all over Kenya. And we are actually working with also other IT asset disposal companies internationally who have clients. with the base of operations here in Kenya. So we are a certified refurbishing partner for SK test and also SIMS life cycle services who have their clients here in Kenya. So we collect devices from their clients, refurbish the devices on their behalf and provide the necessary reporting for them. Wonderful. Yes. Would you like me to take you through the procedure? Yeah. So essentially, We use our own in-house ERP system to capture and track these devices and create what we call our inventory. So the ERP system is developed based on the procedures that we are supposed to do in refurbishing. ⁓ From the point of collection of the load from the plant, ⁓ once it arrives to the warehouse, there are various processes that we do. first of all being registration of the device. So we capture the devices, specifications, model numbers, serial numbers, and we actually assign a refurbishment number to each device so that we can track it based on the load that it came from. And once it’s taken through the refurbishment process, we are able now to provide a report to the client based on this. So there are various products that we refurbish. Our basic ICT hardware, is monitors, desktop PCs, ⁓ mobile phones, laptops, as well as tablets. And sometimes as well, we do get printers and other networking equipment like servers and switches. So all those will go through our refurbishment process. There are different stages. for each particular kind of product. more or less the refurbishment process is more first of all registration. then taking it through the testing phases. So we will test monitors for their display performance as well as the physical condition of it. So first procedure will be checking. then we do monitor testing on this slide. Any item, because it is more or less a process flow, any item that is already identified as having a physical defect will be earmarked for tailoring and marked for recycling.

Patrick Hypscher: And when you say tear down, this is then also the point where you see, these are spare parts that you can reuse another time. So you put them on stock somewhere and other parts are going to a recycling.

Timothy Wachira: Yes, so ⁓ the parts that we will harvest basically are parts that we can just probably ⁓ unscrew and screw on another device. So if it has a damaged display, for example, we will remove ⁓ the monitor stand and we can reuse that monitor stand for a device that is lacking a monitor stand.

Patrick Hypscher: I mean, just given the whole variety of monitors out there in the market and the specifics of each manufacturer and sometimes each model, I mean, your ERP system, how do you find that you have two stands for this specific monitor? Is it up to date? I mean, I know the daily challenges of keeping the ERP system up to date. It’s such a variety of spare parts here. How do you handle that?

Timothy Wachira: So what we usually do, for example, I’ll give you an example using this Philips monitor. This Philips monitor, once it arrives, we will capture the specifications of the device. The size, the color, the brand name, and we’ll also get the serial number and print out a refurbished number for this device. So once that check-in is done, it goes into processing. Under processing, we will test the device to check out the display. ⁓ You’ll see things like this. These are stickers that were there on the client. Are they removable? We will capture that. If they are not removable, we’ll capture that defect. We’ll also look at the display, how it performs. Does it have any missing pixels, et cetera? Then we will, if it’s missing a monitor stand, we will mark it as missing a monitor stand. then in our inventory we will grade it based on those defects. So a device that is 100 % working, okay, doesn’t have any cosmetic defects, that device is graded as a grade A. And in our inventory file, you can be able to filter out devices with a grade A. So those ones are ready for impact deployment. Grade B would be minor defects, maybe cosmetic, maybe a faded. something faded or scratches on the display like this, but 100 % still working. So there are those devices that are missing a part that would be required for remanufacturing for that device to be fully operational. We will grade it as a grade C. So out of those defects, we are able now to check on our parts inventory list because we also capture our parts inventory. Items like hard drives will be assigned a media tracking number. and put in our cage location for reuse. ⁓ Items like monitor stands. Now once we do the processing and we discover, for example, this monitor display is defective, we will actually dismantle the monitor stand, put it in our ventricle equation. So we count based on the brand and model. A lot of ⁓ the clients that we get devices from, usually because they are cooperates, they use the most similar devices. it doesn’t, we don’t have a lot of stock keeping units when it comes to the models that we keep in our stock. So it becomes easy as well to remanufacture or upcycle a product. Essentially we thought we as much as possible avoid buying new parts.

[00:18:10] Refurbishment and Grading Process

Patrick Hypscher: And do you sometimes even go beyond and say okay we already have 50 stands for this Philips ⁓ on stock but we could sell it a second hand, these spare parts? This is what you also do.

Timothy Wachira: This is also what we Because there are other players in the market that are ⁓ also pushing out used devices. They might be importing monitors without stands. And we might have old inventory of monitor stands. We also do that. Another aspect now is the data-wire processing. We use these tables to connect devices to DataWipe and Blanco. ⁓ We’ll do a variety of PCs and notebooks on this table. And then we also have the ability to do DataWipe for mobile phones. So we also collect a variety of mobile phones from the market. ⁓ The numbers are not so high, basically, because a lot of devices people will use up until the end of life, unfortunately, for mobile devices. But the number that we get, we still are able to, ⁓ this is more where the remanufacturing process takes place. So for example, this particular mobile phone has a broken screen. This we are able to repair. We do have a repair shop as well in our alternate location. So all these devices coming for repair. Blanco Mobility as well is used to wipe mobile phones. And the good thing is Blanco Mobility, once we are able to do a data eye, we’ll also upload the latest version of iOS or the latest version of Android on that particular device. So we’re able to give the end user most up-to-market user experience when it comes to the mobile phone.

Patrick Hypscher: And in cases like this, I mean, this is an iPhone, I don’t know, a ⁓ 5, 6 or so.

Timothy Wachira: Yeah, this is an iPhone, I think, 7.

Patrick Hypscher: At some point they’re out of service from Apple. So this is the from a software perspective.

Timothy Wachira: Exactly, that’s the limitation for software perspective. most of this now, if you get a huge batch, maybe we can reuse some of the items just to, we will scrap the device and then we can reuse some of the hardware from the device to remanufacture other devices. Okay, gotcha. So those are the limitations of refurbishment sometimes. ⁓ These are the types of products as well that we are working on. And a lot of these products are going to impact projects. Like ⁓ this particular example, Nier Load, has been prepared for a foundation in Ethiopia called Kamara Education. So we are able to provide at least 500 complete desktop units. We are importing them into Ethiopia. ⁓ fully loaded with the software that they require. And they are going into schools directly.

Patrick Hypscher: OK, and this is like a mini desktop.

[00:23:59] Revenue Models and Partnerships

Timothy Wachira: Yes, we call it an ultra small desktop PC. This is paired to a monitor. You can even tie it to a monitor. So it becomes very easy to actually ⁓ minimize. We have a small classroom. So you minimize on space. you’re able to still get a fully working PC with Windows 11. So that’s the perfection of doing it.

Patrick Hypscher: And we probably come back to some commercial, maybe even numbers later. So I assume this hardware has been donated, you process this and you donated then in this case to Etopia. So how do you make money?

Timothy Wachira: Yes. So essentially it’s not really a donation. Okay. We are selling these devices to them at a very low cost. Maybe at a cost that probably is even more than half the price of a new device. You know, to go to the market and buy a brand new computer. Okay. Yes. And all other auxiliaries are free. like keyboards, mice, cables. Also, we can meet the costs ourselves. And we also load in software under our Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher program. So it’s genuine software at half the cost of a commercial license. So essentially, we are providing the devices, yes, at a cost so that we can be able to run our operations, but still lower than the market price of a new device. So still providing accessibility to the end user.

Patrick Hypscher: And I understood that you also sometimes donate ⁓ devices. ⁓ how do you decide what to donate and what do you sell?

Timothy Wachira: So, a decision based on a donation, we will actually work with other partners who come in as sponsors. Yes. So, we actually have a program called Adopt a Classroom, where a sponsor comes in and purchases hardware for a particular school, identified by a panel. So, a panel of companies coming together. then identifying a particular school in a remote area and then adopting the classroom. So for us, we provide the hardware and also install the mobile or the digital classroom in that school and offer end user support as well. OK, yes. OK, wonderful. So ⁓ other ways that we can raise revenue because It’s not all devices that come in ⁓ as donated. there are clients who want to carry out ⁓ end of life disposition the right way, but ⁓ they want also to recoup some value out of the disposal. Maybe they have very nice devices that if they were to take to market, they would get value, but they have not gone through a proper IT asset disposition. So essentially we have two models. call it, one of them is buyback value. So we offer buyback value for those devices, essentially buying the devices from the client, then taking the devices through the refurbishment process so that we can have clean devices going out to our clients. And also the other one is revenue share. So essentially we collect, refurbish, and then ⁓ agree on a revenue share percentage with the client for the resale of these devices. We will always deduct the costs of processing and we also try to keep those costs of processing as low as possible. Maybe the biggest cost contributor would be the transport. So collection and transport of the devices probably from a company in Nairobi to Mombasa. But the refurbishment costs per device are pretty low. Okay. Yes. we essentially have to do that so that we also at the outbound end, provide a device that is still affordable to an end user.

Patrick Hypscher: Do you need to already do some creating or some first diagnosis at the customer side that you already know at the customer space where this is going or will anyway just every appliance just get here and will be registered, checked so it doesn’t make sense to have some remote diagnostic?

Timothy Wachira: Okay, we do a prior diagnostic with the support of the clients. So we will ask for a hardware collection list to be filled by the clients indicating the status of the devices. And then we can determine, we can predetermine by just looking at the defects, whether these devices are worth collecting and taking into refurbishment. And we… The other aspect now, if you are getting donated devices, we’ll have to collect as well other forms of We will essentially even have cable e-waste in there, ⁓ cable e-waste in there, maybe older, for example, telecommunication handsets. So we will receive and check it all in so that we can have ⁓ the tracking of the hardware. And then once we segregate, everything else will be collected in one location as electronic waste and then transfer it later once we get a full economic load to a downstream recycler. So we are still enabling responsible e-waste collection for other forms of electronic waste that are coming from partners that we are collecting devices from.

[00:29:50] Future Plans and Expansion

Patrick Hypscher: What are the numbers you can share to get an idea of the volume?

Timothy Wachira: Volume wise, here in Kenya, so far since inception, that is 2019, we’ve been able to process over 80,000. Yes, maybe at the end of this year, we’ll be about at 105,000 devices. So the numbers are quite high. Overall, for close the gap, it’s over 1.7 million devices. Yes, because now close the gap in Belgium as well are collecting devices and also refurbishing them. Yes.

Patrick Hypscher: And can you give us a rough indication what’s the share of devices that go to recycling and what’s the share that’s repurposed?

Timothy Wachira: So I’d say 90 % are going into refurbishment and being repurposed. Nice. 10 % going into recycling. Cool. Yes. Awesome. So the numbers are, or items that we refurbish are quite high. Yeah. And this is because at the beginning, as you asked before, do a prior grading before we collect the devices. We also have a… and an MOU with our downstream recycler. If I get a request for hardware collection and I determine that all the items from that collection are probably destined for recycling, they will do the collection on my behalf and directly start the recycling process. So we are able to eliminate unnecessary costs of transport and extra work that our team would do. for devices that will not be actually reusable. OK. Yes.

Patrick Hypscher: And so many more questions.

Timothy Wachira: No problem.

Patrick Hypscher: It sounds a bit as if Close The Gap is ⁓ kind of steering a two-sided platform. So on the one hand, you have the companies and the organizations that ⁓ get rid of their used hardware. And on the other side, you have ⁓ organizations and individuals that buy refurbished hardware. In many of these cases, the art is always to match volume, demand and supply. So where is the bigger challenge? Is the bigger challenge in making sure that you have enough used devices to meet the demand side? Or is it easier to get the used devices and then you need to make sure that you ⁓ sell it out to avoid having too much.

Timothy Wachira: Okay, the challenge at the beginning was ⁓ essentially here in Kenya was to get the used devices. So ⁓ what we did to enable us have our operations move as fast as possible, we had to get ⁓ inbound from our Belgian operation. So we imported a container almost every month of already refurbished equipment to the Kenyan market. and we are able to supply our impact projects as fast as possible. Yes. So with time, we’ve been able to ⁓ create inventory, ⁓ inbound inventory in the local market. Because as the reputation of what you’re bringing in from Belgium as already refurbished used computers, our clients are also turning into our customers. So basically they understand now that they can get even higher quality devices ⁓ and donate their used devices to us.

Patrick Hypscher: I was seeing this cage over there. What’s happening there?

Timothy Wachira: Okay, can take you there so we can see. So essentially the cage is built for isolation of hard drives for what you call external data. So you’ll receive a device, take it to our data table. Once we put it on power, we discover that… The magic key. So essentially we discovered that the device probably has a faulty board on it or cannot power on or the screen does not display. So essentially what we are supposed to do, come in, is build out the hard drive and wipe it externally. So we connect it to a PC externally and then carry out the data wipe for the hard drive. Once the hard drive is wiped successfully, we will assign it what we call a media tracking number, same as the refurbishment number for the devices. So each particular hard drive has to have that is moved out externally, have a media tracking number and put it put on an inventory for reuse. So data destruction is done by shredding of the hard drive. So mechanical shredding, we have two shredders, we have a 2.5 millimeter shredder. this one does the 2.5 millimeter solid-state drives mostly we also have mechanical ⁓ I believe I can get a mechanical one of the mechanical 2.5 millimeter drives and then this does the 3.5 millimeter the bigger older hard drives

Patrick Hypscher: I see an old… It’s not a floppy disk, that’s even the other one.

Timothy Wachira: Yes. It’s called a diskette. These are the old storage even before the USB flash drive. ⁓

Patrick Hypscher: 3.5 megabytes. ⁓ And you have to make sure that the… So you even destroy these.

Timothy Wachira: unlocked for you to store. Even this one might be destroyed.

Patrick Hypscher: And do you still have floppy? This? Yes.

Timothy Wachira: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So essentially this, 2.5 millimeter shredder, you’re able to do the disc heads, the CDs, because sometimes you also get CDs within the pieces once you collect.

Patrick Hypscher: So you put in this and it comes out.

Timothy Wachira: Yes, it comes out as this. So you can imagine, you cannot be able to repeat that.

Patrick Hypscher: Indeed, that’s an unsolvable puzzle.

Timothy Wachira: Exactly. And some of these like the we separate based on the types. Yeah. Some of these like these are CDs. We can separate this waste. It can be repurposed once it goes to someone who wants to, for example, like artwork. Yeah. You can use this for artwork. OK. Put it on a canvas, create an image probably. Yeah. Yeah. So we still use it used for this. But our recycler as well handles

Patrick Hypscher: course, resource lost, but for some data security reasons, even more important.

Timothy Wachira: Yeah, so other examples of the coil folds. So these are some of the defects. So this one basically has been wiped, has been graded as a grade C because still reusable but has a broken back. So we will replace this broken back and then we will grade it as a probably grade B. Okay. Yes. So essentially that’s what we do. We get quite good devices. iPhone 11s, iPhone Xs like this but the rest like the 8s and 7s. Now this one will be ⁓ unfortunately ⁓ destroyed.

Patrick Hypscher: Because the customer requests to do so?

Timothy Wachira: No, no, because it’s getting outdated in terms of IOS support. So we’ll dismantle, we’ll remove the screen, the battery, separate the battery and then put the rest on our shoulder. Yeah. All right. So that’s the use of the cage, to keep ⁓ that hard drive secure for the process of external data type and also data destruction. Yes.

[00:39:05] Conclusion and Call to Action

Patrick Hypscher: we look into the future, what ⁓ are the main projects you want to drive? Where do you want to be in three to five years from now?

Timothy Wachira: Okay, we are looking at ever expanding our IT asset disposition and we probably will have to move into a bigger facility and a facility that is also closer to our corporate partners. Maybe in the future we might be shifting back to Nairobi to enable our business scale up. We will still maintain the circular economy. here in Mombasa, but at a smaller scale. But we feel that is the direction that will give us more assets that we can take through the process as well as also build up our footprint in the region. Also, we are looking at scaling up into other markets within the East African community and also the sub-Saharan region. Already we have a similar circular economy hub in Kinshasa, the DRC, as well as ⁓ news not yet announced, but we are also setting up a circular economy hub in South Africa. Wow. we, having ⁓ built the model here in Kenya and we’ve seen the impact that it can have. We are also looking at those markets that do not have something similar as what we have because the circular economy hub is one first of its kind in Kenya and I believe in East Africa. So we are bringing on board partners who can be able to enable us to scale up, invest initiatives and help us to build on the circular economy. story.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. You said you’re bringing on board partners. What are the kind of partners you’re looking for or what kind of partners should be ⁓ collaborating with you?

Timothy Wachira: So first of all, we are looking at ⁓ corporates and ⁓ larger institutions who’d want to donate their used IT equipment ⁓ to take it through proper and safe e-waste handling and also refurbishment. That would be number one and key for us. And then of course, we want partners who can come on board to help us ⁓ also. build our impact accelerator program, especially invest in young entrepreneurial aspects and ⁓ young businesses that we are incubating at our hub in Ratna Square. Because a lot of the young people have a challenge gaining ⁓ or getting access to finance that can be able to enable them to scale up their businesses, especially in circular economy. And we’d want to have partners who would be able to help us get the young entrepreneurs there. As well as we are also looking at partners who can be able to adopt a classroom by enabling us set up digital classrooms in schools all over the country in Kenya and also tap into our innovative mobile classrooms, what you call the doobie track. So this is a container retrofitted as a classroom, a shipping container that is a 40 foot cubic container that is put on a trailer. and can be managed by a partner to provide digital skills training and other types of entrepreneurial training to individuals who would not really have access to such facilities because of the nature that they’re in remote areas, areas that do not have ⁓ quite good infrastructure to provide such skills. So those are the kind of partners we want to work with.

Patrick Hypscher: So actually, ⁓ players who want to also enhance education and bridge the digital divide. ⁓ And for the hub, it’s about entrepreneurs, business angels, venture capitalists who want to support the East African ecosystem, but also benefit from the emerging economy here in Kenya. ⁓ And on the first one, ⁓ companies, international companies who have hardware that reaches its end of life and want to make sure that this hardware is in good hands and has a positive impact. ⁓

Timothy Wachira: indeed ⁓ yeah

Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful, Timothy. Thank you. And thanks for showing me around, having this opportunity. And even more thanks for the work you’re doing here on the ground.

Timothy Wachira: Thank you as well. was a pleasure hosting you Patrick. Indeed we have had this opportunity to showcase what we do and ⁓ we are still not up there yet. We still want to scale up to be the best IT asset disposition in Africa.

Patrick Hypscher: All the best for that.

Timothy Wachira: All right.

Patrick Hypscher: This conversation with Close the Gap concludes our series on circular entrepreneurship in Kenya, where we’ve listened to the inspiring stories and business models of founders building a more sustainable and equitable future in East Africa. If you like this series, leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. Let’s drive a profitable circular economy. And please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination. you My name is Patrick Hübscher and this is Circularity FM, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.