Africa has the highest rate of urbanisation and economic growth.

These trends drive growth in demand for consumer goods, a trend expressing itself by a shift in provisioning from traditional markets to supermarkets. This is emphasized by the fast spread of supermarkets.

With these changes in consumption come an increase in quantity and variety of waste generated. Prior studies show insufficient infrastructure and investment in waste management.

To inform waste management planning, metabolic flow models have been developed to describe food acquisition from a traditional market vs. a supermarket.

Consumer food flows are formulated based on cultural profiling and quantified via the daily nutritional requirements of a healthy person. The waste profiles are obtained by reading from packaging and processing data.

With transition towards supermarket consumption, the post-consumer waste contains more inorganic material i.e. packaging and a portion of organic waste shifts to the supply chain where food is processed.

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