A Review of Waste-to-Energy Recovery Pathway for Feasible Electricity Generation in Lowland Cities of Lesotho

The current increase in the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation is a great challenge in both the developed and developing countries. The difference is that developing countries struggle in keeping up pace with rate at which MSW is being generated vis-à-vis the population growth. This has resulted into a big challenge of MSW collection, transportation and disposal. Lesotho is one of the developing countries with poor waste management. However, the challenge of Lesotho is not only waste management but inadequacy of electricity generation. The total electricity demand of Lesotho is about 153MW, of which only 76MW is locally generated from the local hydropower Plants. The balance of the demand is imported from South Africa and Mozambique at a very high cost. Hence, there is a need to look inward into possibility of local electricity generation. One of the ways to achieve this is the development of the country's waste to energy facilities for electricity generation. In this way, the energy deficit gap could be bridged leading to electricity/environmental sustainability for Lesotho. As part of our ongoing research, this paper presents the overview of MSW in Lesotho in terms of waste collection and management. It also gives an overview on state of electricity generation in terms of availability and affordability for Lesotho. The feasible waste to energy technologies are suggested based on the waste profile of Lesotho.