Prioritizing solid waste collection is a key issue for cities in low-resource countries, where logistical, health, social, and institutional constraints make operational decisions particularly complex. In Kinshasa, a megacity marked by rapid population growth and highly fragmented sanitation actors, prioritization mechanisms remain largely informal and reactive. This article offers an empirical analysis of the decision-making criteria used in waste collection planning, with a view to formulating a contextual prioritization index adapted to challenging urban realities. The methodology is based on a qualitative and empirical approach combining 22 semi-structured interviews with institutional, operational, community, and informal actors, as well as 14 field observation grids covering different types of urban areas. The data were analyzed using thematic coding assisted by NVivo 14, followed by empirical weighting of the criteria and systematic triangulation with the observations. The results highlight the dominance of health and logistical criteria in a reactive management approach, modulated by social, economic, and political factors. On this basis, a contextual prioritization index (CPI) is proposed, inspired by multi-criteria approaches but distinguished from them by its empirical construction of weights. This index also provides a relevant foundation for integrating context-aware decision rules into smart waste management systems, particularly IoT-based approaches. The CPI is an operational decision-making tool that can be transferred to other comparable urban contexts and paves the way for future inter-urban analyses.
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