Mombasa Plastics Prize: How Impact Design Sparks Ecosystem Change
What happens when young people take on plastic pollution with design tools in hand?
The Mombasa Plastics Prize (MPP) set out to find out. Its mission: to inspire youth in Mombasa County to tackle marine plastic waste, especially in informal settlements, by turning bold ideas into real action.
The Challenge at a Glance
- Mombasa generates 850 metric tons of waste every day
- 20% is plastic
- Only 46% is collected
- Just 5% is recycled
Across Kenya, 37,000 tonnes of plastic leak into the ocean annually.
In September 2022, Challenge Works, in partnerships with Proportion Global and Institute of Design and Innovation, invited 18- to 25-year-olds youth in informal settlements in Mombasa county, passionate about generating sustainable innovative solutions for this crisis through the Mombasa Plastics Prize innovation challenge, building on the Afri-Plastics Challenge funded by Global Affairs Canada.
Designing from the Ground Up
Our goal was to focus on building problem-solving capabilities of the young individuals through life-centered design approaches. This approach enables innovators to consistently and continuously learn how to be agile as an entrepreneur. Participants kicked off with a five-day design sprint—learning to frame problems, testing ideas quickly, and designing low-fidelity prototypes.
How Impact Design Can Shift an Ecosystem
Each team asked:
What are the biggest pain-points of the community I come from, and what is the most context-relevant value my solution can add for them?
Over five months, innovators collaborated with local and global experts in business innovation through in-person and online facilitations, coaching and mentorship to bring their ideas to life.
At the end of the innovation challenge, 14 business prototypes emerged across themes on the plastics recycling value chain, new innovations and behavioral change.
Notable solutions included:
Twende Green Ecocycle: which is turning plastic waste into school furniture and has collected over 30,500 kg of ocean-bound plastics, saved more than 91,500 kg of CO₂ emissions, created 13 local jobs, and empowered over 10,500 community members. Recognized as Best Innovation in Mombasa 2024, Twende Green has been featured on KBC, presented at the World Around Summit 2025, and hosted Norway’s State Secretary and TechBridge Invest at their local workshop.
Rafiki PEPS Enterprise: A youth-led initiative installing plastic collection cages in schools to boost recycling and create green jobs. They’ve partnered with the Kenya Girl Guides Association to teach waste segregation, collected over 300 kg of plastic waste using a new cart, and run community clean-up campaigns to reduce environmental waste.
Furies Enterprise :A women-led venture designing fun, educational games on marine plastic pollution. Their flagship game, Baharia Ninja, has sold over 85 copies, reached 8 schools, hosted game nights, and earned Ksh 175,000 in revenue. They’re producing 100 more games and aiming for 75% women employment.
Other solutions include Eco-Prints Generation, which turns discarded plastics into high-quality 3D printing filaments under the tagline “3D printing the future.” Plas-Tech converts plastic waste into clean cooking gas, addressing both pollution and energy needs. Oceania Pacesetter transforms marine plastic into striking artworks and functional items, proving that sustainability and creativity go hand in hand.
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From Ideas to Action
The innovation challenge’s success surfaced a need to support the most promising prototypes, and IDI, in collaboration with Proportion Global, designed an incubation phase, which focused on co-implementation with Mombasa-based enablers. The seven-month MPP Incubator Program supported nine teams with coaching, mentoring, funding, and connections to refine, test and launch their solutions. The goal: move ideas from paper into communities, creating real, lasting impact.
Shifting Mindsets and Systems
Through life-centered design, participants didn’t just respond to a problem, they built community-driven, sustainable, and impactful solutions. Over 14,000 KGs of plastics were collected, 90+ partnerships formed and 6,500+ collaborations with community members were conducted.
The innovation challenge and incubation also garnered recognition and visits from King of the United Kingdom King Charles the III, the Ambassador of USA to Kenya, Meg Whitman, and the Ambassador of Costa Rica to Kenya, Giovanna Valverde Stark.
Post-incubation, some of these teams have continued to gain recognition, with features on platforms like KBC, Ocean Network Express Europe and Africa, and the EU Youth Sounding Board. They’ve also earned awards from UNICEF’s BeGreen Recognition, the Tony Elumelu Foundation, and the IKEA Foundation.
While the innovation ecosystem is still fragmented, empowering youth directly with design-led innovation skills enables them as innovators to build value-driven partnerships for advocacy, continuous agile innovation and community-based collaboration, slowly piecing together the larger ecosystem in Mombasa. That’s the power of impact-led life-centered design: it shifts the culture of innovation by empowering the next generation of innovators with problem-solving skills that strengthen ecosystem collaborations.