Egyptian “Bekia” raises $765,000: waste-collection platform moves from household service to corporate contracts and carbon credits
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In a scene where most municipal waste in Egypt still ends up in open, undocumented dumps, the Bekia platform closed a Seed financing round of $765,000. The investment is led by Madica, the African investment program of Flourish Ventures, with follow-on from Catalyst Fund and participation from Jambaar Capital based in Dakar. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team, launch the first corporate-focused software product Bekia Next, and test the model in a second African market.
Bekia was founded in 2019 by Alaa Afifi, a computer science graduate of Cairo University, as an app that connects households directly with collectors: the user books waste collection, the collector arrives at a scheduled time, the material is weighed instantly at a published price, and the earnings are transferred to a bank account or digital wallet. Each transaction records the supplier, weight, grade and payment, creating a documented supply of recyclable material that companies can rely on.
Results to date: it has prevented more than 25,000 tonnes of waste from reaching landfills, served over 100,000 customers, 97 % of whom are women, and enabled more than 2,400 people to earn income through the network. Corporate retention exceeds 95 %, and growth has surpassed seven-fold since 2023. Refurbished electronics also began generating revenue for the first time in June 2026.
“The sector has always operated, but it operated covertly, in cash and trust, without any record,” says Alaa Afifi, founder and CEO. “We built the software layer that changes that: the collector gets a transaction history, the processor receives a documented supply, and the household knows what its waste is worth.”
Bekia will launch the Bekia Next product at the end of next October, which converts the collected data into documented carbon-avoidance certificates for corporate clients, in accordance with an internationally recognised accounting methodology. It is the first product Bekia sells on a subscription basis rather than on-demand service.
Egypt produces roughly 60,000 tonnes of municipal waste daily, most of which ends up in open dumps rather than recycling plants, and the government aims to raise the recycling rate to 60 % by 2027 from about 37 % in 2024. Most waste collection today remains in the hands of an informal sector that operates without contracts, licences or records.
With tightening sustainability reporting requirements for multinational companies operating in Egypt, Afifi expects companies that can verify the fate of their waste to command higher value than those whose role is limited to transport only. This gap represents an opportunity for anyone who owns a reliable data layer in the Egyptian market, and could serve as a model for other Arab states that rely on similar informal sectors.
The round itself is modest in size compared with major infrastructure deals, but it signals a genuine shift: demand for documentation and carbon compliance is no longer a luxury, but a contractual requirement. For operators in the region, the story suggests that digitising the informal sector may create a new revenue stream before regulations compel everyone onto the same path.