Across much of Africa, vehicle recycling still operates almost entirely outside formal structures. Millions of end-of-life vehicles are dismantled informally, with hulks abandoned in compounds and along roadsides because the shredding plants, authorised treatment centres and enforcement systems that underpin recycling elsewhere in the world simply don’t yet exist. Yet beneath that informality lies a sector already doing real work, recovering parts, keeping vehicles on the road for longer, and supporting livelihoods across the continent.
This webinar looks at what it will take to turn that informal activity into a professional, regulated industry. From a Nigeria-based pilot study feeding into a wider West African recycling strategy, to three decades of hands-on experience building a parts-reuse business in South Africa, our speakers offer two very different but complementary views of the same challenge: how do you build the governance, infrastructure and market confidence needed for responsible vehicle recycling to take hold?
Featuring Dr Kemjika Ajoku, former Head of Industry Division at the ECOWAS Commission, and John Hunt, founder of South African parts specialist Sparesboyz, two contributors with deep, practical experience of policy development and on-the-ground recycling in Africa, this session will explore the regulatory gaps, economic opportunity and formalisation pathways shaping the future of the sector.
John Hunt founded South African parts specialist Sparesboyz in 1990, starting with two Mercedes cars and building the business into a full-scale vehicle recycling and parts-reuse operation. Along the way he navigated some of the toughest brand-protection restrictions in the industry, helped shift public perception of reused parts through a landmark legal case, and centralised operations to serve customers across South Africa and beyond.
More than three decades on, John runs Sparesboyz to environmental standards modelled on European best practice, learned first-hand through visits to recyclers in the UK and elsewhere. He has become an outspoken advocate for stronger regulation in South Africa, arguing that weak enforcement, inconsistent write-off coding and gaps in vehicle de-registration are holding the sector back and leaving it exposed to crime, including cloning and cross-border vehicle theft.
In this webinar, John will draw on his 30 years in the trade to explain what proper end-of-life vehicle management looks like in practice, why South Africa remains decades behind international standards, and what it would take, in regulation, enforcement and industry buy-in to close that gap.
Dr Kemjika Ajoku is a development expert with a long track record in policy formulation and industrial strategy at national, regional, continental and global levels. Over two decades at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, he managed and developed major programmes including the West African Common Industrial Policy with UNIDO, the ECOWAS Automotive Industry Policy Framework funded by the African Development Bank, and the ECOWAS Automotive Industry Value Chain Development Strategy funded by Afreximbank.
Since retiring from ECOWAS, Kemjika has continued this work as an independent consultant, working closely with organisations including UNIDO, the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and Afreximbank. He is currently leading a baseline study for the ECOWAS Commission on the environmental management of end-of-life vehicle recycling in Nigeria. Research being used as a pilot for a wider West African recycling strategy, alongside plans for a Vehicle Conformity Assessment Platform to screen roadworthiness of vehicles entering the region. He holds a doctorate in Technology Management.
In this webinar, Kemjika will share findings from his Nigeria research, setting out the scale of the informal sector, the gap between existing ELV regulation and its enforcement, and the economic case, backed by Afreximbank’s billion-dollar automotive fund for building formal recycling infrastructure across West Africa.
The International Roundtable on Automotive Recycling (IRT)
brings together the leading international automotive recycler associations and industry officials. This webinar is open to anyone
