An entrepreneur in Nigeria has found value from used car tyres

In Nigeria, a country heavily reliant on revenues from its oil exports, entrepreneur Ifedolapo Runsewe has identified another type of black gold: used car tyres.

She has set up Freetown Waste Management Recycle, an industrial plant dedicated to transforming old tyres into paving bricks, floor tiles and other goods that are in high demand in Africa’s most populous nation.

“Creating something new from something that will otherwise be lying somewhere as waste was part of the motivation,” Runsewe told Reuters at her factory in the city of Ibadan in southwest Nigeria.