Kidus Asfaw accepted the award for startup of the year at the Global Startup Awards in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Kidus Asfaw and Penda Marre founded the Ethiopian-Kenyan company Kubik in 2021, which is a provider of environmental technology with offices in both Ethiopia and Kenya.
The company employs cutting-edge technology for recycling and repurposing plastic waste into green, cost-effective, and long-lasting low-carbon building materials. Kubik wants to use this technology to make cheap housing and public infrastructure that can help underprivileged communities.
With the anticipated rise in population, this has the potential to alter the course of construction in Ethiopia and Africa forever and provide a solution to the problem of creating affordable housing. The use of recycled plastic in construction will cut down on waste and carbon emissions while also making the environment cleaner and safer.
Kubik and the Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC) have reached an agreement for the company to lease space in the Adama Industrial Park to build a waste plastic recycling plant.
Through the manufacturing of the construction materials, they hope to recycle about 10,000 tons of plastic waste annually.
