When the massive landfill in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, gave way a year ago, Zamhall Nansamba first mistook the thunderous roar for an airplane taking off.
Moments later, screams pierced the air as a torrent of garbage tore through the area, uprooting trees and swallowing everything in its path.
Nansamba, 31, grabbed her children and ran. She was one of the lucky ones – the deadly wave of waste killed about 35 people and stopped just short of her home.
One year on, many survivors of the Aug. 9, 2024, collapse at the Kiteezi dump remain uncompensated, still living in the shadow of a deadly landfill.
“We are living a miserable life,” Nansamba told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Kiteezi is the largest landfill in Kampala, serving the city’s residents since 1996 and receiving 2,500 tons of waste daily.
City authorities recommended closing it when it reached capacity in 2015, but garbage kept coming.
The disaster highlighted the challenge of managing waste in many rapidly urbanizing African cities.
A 2017 landfill collapse in Ethiopia killed 116 people. A year later, 17 died after heavy rain caused a landslide at a dump in Mozambique.
It doesn’t help that wealthier countries send vast amounts of waste to Africa, particularly secondhand clothes, computers and cars.
In 2019, the United States exported some 900 million items of secondhand clothing to Kenya alone – more than half designated as waste, according to the Changing Markets Foundation, an advocacy group.
The Kiteezi collapse “could have been avoided,” said Ivan Bamweyana, a scholar of geomatics at Kampala’s Makerere University.
For a decade, he said, the landfill grew vertically until it reached a height of some 30 meters (98 feet).
Early on the morning of the collapse, rain seeped into the landfill’s cracks, triggering a fatal cascade.
“What is coming can still be avoided,” Bamweyana said of the continued risks at the site.
The landfill continues to emit methane gas, which caused fires in February and June.
While no longer in official use, locals still climb its slopes to eke out a living collecting plastic bottles to sell.
“I would not be shocked if there was a secondary crash,” Bamweyana said.
Official figures on the number of homes destroyed vary, but dozens were confirmed lost in the initial incident, with more damaged during the search for bodies.
A Red Cross spokesperson said many of the 233 people displaced have still not received compensation.
Shadia Nanyongo’s home was buried. She now shares a single room with six other family members.
The 29-year-old told AFP she still has not been compensated. The family eats one meal a day and squeezes together on two mattresses at night.
“I pray to God to come with money, because this situation is not easy,” Nanyongo said.
Her friend, fellow survivor Nansamba, still lives on the edge of the landfill.
The stench of garbage fills her house, and the area is infested with vermin. She said her children suffer bacterial infections at least three times a month.
Nansamba wants to move but cannot afford to unless the government, which promised compensation, pays for other houses she owned, rented out, and lost in the disaster. Her own home was not destroyed.
Memories of the collapse keep her up at night.
“You hear dogs barking ... you think ghosts have come,” she said.
The Kampala Capital City Authority, or KCCA, told AFP that compensation would be paid in September and that a new landfill site had been selected in Mpigi District, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the city center.
KCCA said everything had been done legally, but the National Forestry Authority told AFP that the new garbage site infringes on a protected forest and wetlands reserve – and that city authorities began dumping there in late 2024 without their knowledge.
“They did it hurriedly (and) illegally,” said Aldon Walukamba, a spokesperson for the forestry authority.
The city, home to about 1.7 million people according to last year’s census, continues to grow – meaning such trade-offs between trash and the environment are likely to persist.
For Bamweyana, the geomatics scholar, the solution lies in public education.
“We cannot keep solving the problem using the same mechanism that created it,” he said.
