The circular economy features in every discourse and in every business and regional strategy. And yet it is losing ground. The global economy’s circularity rate fell to 6.9% in 2025, down from 8.6% three years earlier. Meanwhile, global resource consumption has grown 3.5-fold since 1970.
How can we explain this paradox? That is the question ADEME and AFD put to Auxilia Conseil and Circulab, commissioning an international study carried out over several months: an extensive literature review and some forty interviews with organisations working on the issue, from Latin America to India, via the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa.
This first article in a series co-written with Auxilia Conseil looks at what the term “circular economy” really covers on a global scale, how regions take it up according to their own pressing needs, and the tensions its rollout creates when international players get involved.
To find out more about the project carried out for ADEME and AFD, contact us.
