Qrent a provider of sustainable refurbished technology solutions and lT asset lifecycle management, says the conversation about circular IT has fundamentally changed. What was once positioned as an environmentally motivated alternative to mainstream procurement has become a commercially compelling strategy – one that simultaneously addresses cost pressure, ESG reporting requirements and operational resilience.
The company says this shift is being driven by converging pressures across the African market. Rising hardware costs, currency volatility, tightening ESG disclosure requirements and increased scrutiny of supply chain sustainability are no longer separate conversations happening in separate boardrooms. They are landing on the same desk, at the same time.
“For a long time, circular IT was something organisations did for their sustainability report. That is changing. Boards and finance teams are now asking the same question their IT and procurement teams have been asking for years: how do we do more with less, faster, and with less exposure? Circular IT answers all three,” says Kwirirai Rukowo, Managing Executive (MEA) at Qrent.
The ESG pressure is real – and it is reaching IT procurement
Organisations across Africa are facing a new wave of sustainability reporting obligations. JSE-listed companies are subject to climate-related disclosure requirements aligned to IFRS S2. Multinationals operating in South Africa are increasingly required by their global parent companies to demonstrate ESG compliance at a supply chain level. Public sector entities and government contractors are facing growing sustainability criteria in procurement and bid evaluation frameworks.
Despite this, IT procurement remains one of the most underexamined areas in most organisations’ ESG strategies. Hardware manufacturing is among the most carbon-intensive stages of a device’s lifecycle. The extraction of raw materials, energy-intensive fabrication processes and international logistics all contribute significantly to an organisation’s Scope 3 emissions – the category that is proving most difficult for companies to measure and reduce.
Qrent says organisations that extend device lifecycles through refurbishment directly reduce the demand for new manufacturing and with it, a measurable portion of their Scope 3 footprint. This is not an indirect or aspirational benefit. It is a quantifiable reduction that can be reported against sustainability targets.
“Most companies have an ESG report. Very few have ESG embedded in their IT strategy. The two need to be the same document,” says Rukowo.
E-waste is a liability, not just an environmental concern
Africa generates a significant volume of electronic waste, yet formal recycling and responsible disposal infrastructure remains limited across most markets. Organisations that accumulate end-of-life devices without a structured disposal strategy face a growing combination of reputational, regulatory and environmental exposure.
Qrent’s model is designed to address this directly. Through IT asset recovery, responsible recycling and lifecycle management services, the company ensures that devices that have reached the end of their productive life are disposed of in a manner that meets environmental standards – removing the liability from the organisation and preventing hardware from entering informal waste streams.
For organisations with sustainability commitments or reporting obligations, this chain of custody – from deployment through to responsible end-of-life disposal – provides the documentary evidence required to demonstrate compliance and due diligence.
Operational resilience and financial flexibility – not a trade-off
One of the persistent misconceptions about refurbished technology is that sustainability and performance exist in tension. Qrent says evidence in the market suggests otherwise. Enterprise-grade hardware, when properly refurbished, tested and certified, delivers the performance required for the majority of business environments and workloads – at a significantly lower cost than equivalent new hardware.
In markets where US dollar-denominated hardware pricing creates significant exchange rate exposure, the ability to procure refurbished technology through local currency-denominated rental and leasing arrangements removes currency risk from IT procurement – a commercial advantage that is independent of any sustainability consideration.
Combined, these factors mean that circular IT is not a compromise made in service of sustainability targets. It is a procurement strategy that delivers on cost, supply chain resilience, ESG compliance and operational continuity – simultaneously.
“The organisations that will lead on sustainability in Africa are not the ones with the most ambitious targets. They are the ones that have built sustainability into the way they actually procure and manage technology – not as a separate initiative, but as a default operating model,” says Rukowo.
A model built for the African market
Qrent says the circular IT model is particularly well suited to the African operating environment, where infrastructure investment cycles are longer, capital budgets are under sustained pressure and the availability of new hardware is subject to supply chain and currency constraints that do not apply to the same degree in more developed markets.
The company’s flexible offering – spanning from refurbished hardware sales, short and long-term rentals, IT asset recovery to lifecycle management is designed to allow organisations to adopt circular IT principles incrementally, without requiring a wholesale change to their procurement model.
“We are not asking organisations to make a values-based decision. We are offering them a better business decision that also happens to be the right environmental decision. In the current market, those are the same thing,” says Rukowo.
Africa Fact: A collection of one thousand six hundred books was considered a small library for a West African scholar of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library of any of his friends – he had only 1600 volumes.
Kickstart
Esna Colyn started her professional career as a chartered accountant doing her articles at an investment banking giant. She spent 17 years in the investment banking, private equity and corporate finance trenches attesting to her mental toughness. Today, she\’s the CEO of one of South Africa\’s foremost beauty franchises, Imbalie Beauty. She\’s had to reinvent herself and her roles numerous times along her journey towards business leadership.