Our Story

The Origin: The Recycling Middlemen (2013 – 2015)

The story of Wezesha Industries began in 2013 with The Recycling Middlemen (TRM), a formerly registered for-profit enterprise which offered recyclable waste collection services to companies in Bulawayo. By 2015, after partnering with the Youth Press Bureau, TRM had grown into one of Bulawayo's largest, formal suppliers of cardboard and plastic to National Waste Collections.

The Turning Point: A Crisis of Conscience

Despite the commercial success of TRM, our founder, Sinqobile, began to witness a troubling reality: formal industry success was driven by waste cartels that had power over an invisible, exploited network of informal waste-pickers. The "aha" moment was a visceral one.

During a routine collection, the TRM team encountered a scene of tragic desperation where two, male waste-pickers had fought violently over the very materials TRM was contracted to collect. This encounter exposed a sector governed by exclusion, where women often laboured in hazardous conditions with their children in tow, earning as little as $3 USD a month.

This crisis of conscience stripped away the corporate veneer of the recycling industry, revealing that the traditional business model was not just competitive—it was fundamentally predatory. It became clear that profit could no longer be decoupled from the dignity of the people at the margins. This realization became the catalyst for Wezesha Industries, shifting the focus from simply managing waste to co-creating an inclusive ecosystem that transforms "waste-picking" into a path for gainful, formal entrepreneurship.

Beyond the Labels: Redefining Circumstantial Entrepreneurship

Driven to find a more equitable model, Sinqobile pursued postgraduate research at the University of Cape Town as a Bertha Scholar for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Her approach was radical and deeply personal; she adopted an ethnographic methodology, living and working alongside informal waste-pickers whom she identified not as victims, but as "circumstantial social entrepreneurs."

Through this collaborative immersion, a new identity emerged. The community rejected derogatory labels often used to describe informal waste pickers such as izibhonda ("crazy, homeless people") and co-created a term that reflected their true economic value: "Above Ground Miners." This linguistic shift sparked a total transformation in mission, evolving her previous company into The Above Ground Mining Project (TAGMP)—an action-research pilot dedicated to building formal market linkages and dismantling negative stereotypes.

The Evolution: The Birth of Wezesha (2021–2022)

Between 2021 and 2022, supported by a seed grant from the FREE Fund (Women Win, Netherlands), TAGMP began rapid-testing a green economy social enterprise model designed to empower differently-abled adolescent girls, young women, and youth to take up gainful opportunities in the recycling space.

The project successfully trained 120 young women in green skills and thereafter incubated MVPs that produced a variety of upcycled products including sweeping brooms made from PET plastic waste. This successful testing phase led to the formalization of the Wezesha Industries' business model in 2022.