Decolonising Circular Economy: Feminist Food Practices and Everyday Circularity in Nairobi - The Example of Women-led Eateries in Mathare as Infrastructures of Care
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55845/joce-2026-41267Keywords:
Circular Economy, Informal Food Systems, Care Economies, Urban Informal Settlements, Nairobi Kenya, Women-led Businesses, Decolonial PerspectivesAbstract
The circular economy (CE) has become a dominant sustainability framework, commonly defined through material and energy loops and R‑strategies such as reuse, repair, and recycling. Yet prevailing approaches remain largely technocratic, gender-blind, and rooted in Global North epistemologies. This paper offers a decolonial‑feminist re‑reading of circularity through an empirical study of women‑led informal eateries in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements. Drawing on qualitative data from semi‑structured interviews, a focus group discussion, and PhotoVoice conducted between August and November 2024, the study examines how circularity is enacted through everyday food provisioning, labour, and care. Findings reveal three interwoven forms of feminist and decolonial circularity: material, labour and social circularity, that sustain household stability and community cohesion where formal systems have failed. Critically, these practices are structurally double-edged: they function as counterpublic care infrastructures contesting colonial legacies, patriarchal norms, and market volatility, while absorbing systemic failures, displacing economic and social costs onto women's bodies, labour, and time. This study proposes a novel framework that reconceptualises circularity by integrating feminist and decolonial perspectives, highlighting the roles of care and structural constraint in shaping circular practices in the Global South. By centring Afro‑decolonial and feminist perspectives, the paper reframes the circular economy not as a universal technical fix but as a contested social and ethical process embedded in survival economies.
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Data Availability Statement
The data supporting the findings of this study consist of qualitative interview material, participatory visual data, and field notes collected in informal settlement contexts.
Due to ethical considerations, including the protection of participants’ anonymity, the full raw datasets are not publicly available.
Coded and anonymised interview excerpts will be made accessible in a suitable repository (e.g., ResearchGate) upon publication. Researchers interested in accessing the anonymised data for secondary analysis may also contact the corresponding author, subject to ethical approval and consent conditions.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Akoua Jamina Kouablan Klein, Nicole Paganini (Author)
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