Circular economy and gendered antagonism in the Global South: The Kambuta fish market in Kisumu, Kenya

Global South waste pickers are key for a circular economy, while providing livelihoods and essential services. At Kambuta fish market in Kisumu, Kenya, poor women started to claim fish remains from the fish exporting industry and transform these into innovative products. The article answers three questions linked to inequalities and exploitation between fish factories, County/City, local middlemen and brokers, and informal fish workers (mostly women): How does this fish market function in terms of circular economy and zero waste? How did the Kambuta market come into being, including its innovative fish remains practices? How has this development affected the fish workers, their community, and Kambuta market as a site for innovative recycling? Methods include interviews, focus groups, site observations, video-voice and action-oriented activities. We show how benefits from innovations, typically made by poor women, are largely seized by others, typically men. Furthermore, corporate actors make these gains their own, as they realise that what they saw as waste gain value through grassroots innovations. There is a distributive conflict between men and women regarding who has the right to access, distribute and to profit from waste; a gendered dispute that intensified as the fish remains increased in value due to innovations by grassroots women.