Nyanga House : Transforming Waste Into Useable Materials

The noise made by harmers, saws and nails are what welcomes you to ‘Nyanga House’, a newborn, which has been in existence for five months now. You also get to see tyres, planks and fabrics at the workshop. The project, created in March 2019, is specialized in the transformation of tyres into household furniture like tables and chairs. It also uses fabrics and cement to make flower vases used for decoration. The enterprise, founded by Mbarga N. Alexandra Emilie, a master’s degree student at the University of Yaounde I, is out to train youths on entrepreneurial skills and how to be selfemployed. This explains the number of youths you find in the workshop.

“My first experiment was from a tyre I got from a dustbin; I took it home for experimentation, which gave me my first result. From there, I then decided to kick start ‘Nyanga House’,” she said. For a start, she has been in contact with some promoters like Jumia Cameroon and wishes to make known her initiative as well as train others on how to produce the pieces. In the long run, the young entrepreneur wishes to expand her knowhow, not only on household accessories and decoration, but in decoration for events.

The 21-year-old teenager says it was her passion and love for recycling and fashion that encouraged her to create ‘Nyanga House’ and has begun marketing her products. A sofa, she says, costs FCFA 35,000 and a stool cost upwards of FCFA 15,000.

The enterprise is one of the two startups of Emilie, which are already in the market. The founder has organized a series of training se...