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The success of the global e-waste regulatory project was declared on the sidelines of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva where CST and ITU outlined the delivery of tailored national frameworks along with practical guidance and economic analyses for the three participating nations. According to the joint announcement the initiative developed three distinct regulatory frameworks one for each country while producing a specialized guide on best practices and conducting detailed studies into implementation costs and extended producer responsibility fee structures. More than 270 organizations and over 480 individual experts contributed to the consultations and capacity-building exercises that shaped the final outputs across Paraguay Rwanda and Zambia.
The project signed in June 2023 at the Global Symposium for Regulators in Sharm El-Sheikh ran from July 2023 through July 2026 with an official launch at COP28 in November 2023 the ITU project documentation shows. Paraguay advanced its regulatory development through a dedicated consultation workshop held in October 2024 that gathered local stakeholders to refine proposed rules. Rwanda conducted a validation workshop in March 2025 focused on electrical and electronic equipment regulations and producer compliance schemes while Zambia held high-level meetings in February 2025 to examine financing options for its extended producer responsibility system according to milestone records kept by the ITU.
A second edition of the publication titled Policy Practices for E-Waste Management Tools for a Balanced and Fair Circular Economy appeared in September 2025 incorporating experiences gained from the three pilot countries the International Telecommunication Union reported. That updated document expands on an earlier handbook designed to assist nations in building policy frameworks for information and communication technology e-waste. The resources are now available to guide similar efforts elsewhere as additional countries have expressed interest in the approach following the project’s demonstrated results.
The world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022 an 82 percent increase from 2010 levels with volumes on track to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030 according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024 produced jointly by ITU and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Only 22 percent of that waste was formally collected and recycled in 2022 even as 81 countries have introduced some form of e-waste legislation and 67 have adopted extended producer responsibility measures the monitor found. Those figures underscore the scale of the challenge the CST-ITU partnership sought to address through targeted regulatory support in developing economies.
Saudi Arabia has maintained membership in the ITU since 1949 and has used that platform to promote regulatory innovation in the digital domain the commission stated in project materials. The e-waste effort aligns with broader international objectives under ITU strategic plans and related resolutions that call for enhanced cooperation on environmentally sound management of electronic waste. Records from the initiative indicate that workshops and studies in the three countries have already informed local policy processes and created models for stakeholder engagement that balance environmental protection with economic considerations.
