Journal of African Development

The circular economy can promote the supply chains of manufacturing activities by retaining the material value and identify other productive inputs sources. Whether firms can coordinate recovery activities without adding extra costs or new dependencies is what dictates their contribution to a business's performance, however. This paper explores the same relationships in the context of African SMEs, via a purposeful narrative examination of academic research publications and institutional publications. To explain how resource stewardship can help in adaptation during the disruption, an analysis was made using the natural resource based view and dynamic capabilities theory. African evidence is included and explicitly conceptual connections are drawn between circular practices, sustainable supply chain resilience and business performance. The synthesis finds that possibilities for material substitution, equipment useful life extension, and supplier collaboration are potential options for resilience. Mechanisms can be weak because of uncertainty of quality, financing constraints and focused recovery networks. Other results (recovery time, frequency of deliveries, usage of resources, conditions of work) must therefore be taken into account when considering financial results. The paper suggests resilience partly mediates the linkages between circular practices and business performance, and proposes infrastructure reliability and collaborative capability as influencing constructions of resilience's strength. These propositions are not tested in this paper. A phased implementation approach, and empirical evaluation through a longitudinal research design are created to facilitate practical implementation and subsequent assessment of the approach across a variety of different African manufacturing contexts..