A month after I left Ghana and said goodbye to our friends at Chendiba and Agbogbloshie, a science journalist, Jon Spaull, visited the site. In addition to taking photographs, he actually did some background research. The result is a nuanced article that sees a city - Accra - through the eyes of grown ups. [one note, I'm in touch with Ibrahim, I don't think he's 14] SciDev.Net is the world’s leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis on information about science and technology for global development. Our main office is based in London but we have a worldwide network of registered users, advisors, consultants and freelance journalists, predominantly from developing countries, who drive our activities and vision. You can explore our regional editions at: - See more at: http://www.scidev.net/global/content/about-us.html#sthash.2dcvtKb2.dpuf
World’s biggest e-dump, or vital supplies for Ghana?
When I visited the unregulated dump in July, I expected to see mountains of computers and TVs stretching into the distance. The reality was rather different.
Compared with other dumps I have seen in Brazil and the Philippines, Agbogbloshie is not particularly large. And instead of masses of people scavenging across mounds of waste, it appeared to be more like a well-organised scrapyard.
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The media have falsely labelled the Agbogbloshie site as the world’s biggest e-waste dump
I discovered no more electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) waste, or e-waste, among the vehicles and other scrap metal than you might expect for a dump in a city of more than two million people, with a growing middle class.
Workers at the site were clearly used to photographers. D. K. Osseo-Asare, colead of a project called AMP that supports Agbogbloshie’s recyclers, told me that many photographers arrive as if going on safari, hoping to capture images of squalor. I wasn’t the only one to notice the discrepancy between what I found and the media portrayal of the site as a magnet for the world’s e-waste. I did, however, see recyclers, mostly boys, extracting metals from e-waste without any form of protection against the toxins this work released.
Part of me knows the way American Hillbillies were portrayed. My kin certainly had a chip on their shoulders. But on the other hand, I do understand that to run a company or a non profit or NGO or government organization, you gotta do some things that you gotta do.
Environmental writer Dave Currey posted a blog this morning which, I think honestly, takes up the same ethical questions about what I call "nurture packaging" or "victim manufacturing". It's the first time I've read Currey's blog, and I haven't been much deeper into Environmental Investigation Agency (a non-electronics EIA) that Twitter or Animal Detectives.
But since I've been dishing out a lot of criticism of photojournalism in the #ewastegate hoax, it's time to take pause and recognize a thoughtful, ethical post about how photography drives fundraising, and how ugly the fundraising business is.
Currey sees it. And in my interviews with StEP, BAN, and R2 staff, they are aware, too. The business of "solving a problem" or cause-based fundraising is a tricky ethical maneuver. At a certain point, "ethical professionals" need to send "ethical passionates" out into the field to raise dough.
My retweets of Currey's blog center on the power of photojournalism, respecting the way it leverages exoticism and nurture, but also calling on ethical scrutiny. The photos sent out by NGO Basel Action Network in 2009 were used to manufacture a "hoax" victim - Africa's "Eden". Greenpeace also filmed ludicrous claims (by AMA "journalist" cough-cough Mike Anane) that Agbogbloshie was a lush fishing and swimming greenfield before used electronics were imported.
If you've been following the last 8 blogs about Agbogbloshie in Ghana, you see the tricky place we are approaching. If the slum dwellers in Accra are burning wire for less than $3 per day, does chasing away the photojournalists do more harm than good?
There's this sense that photos have value, and a sense that some kind of exploitation is going on. But it travels like a rumor, and the Africans are conflicted in whether to participate or boycott the photojournalists. It's part of the #charitableindustrialcomplex that they know is "happening" but don't really understand how to monetize.
If the hyperbole about the "largest e-waste dump on earth" goes away, if the source of the scrap in Agbogbloshie is not "hundreds of containers from sham recyclers" but just pushcarts collecting junk from a city that had 20 TV stations 20 years ago, where does that leave Razak, Awal, and Rachid, the scrappers we did Q-method interview with on film last spring? Are they still "important"?
It's a tricky thing. They have no problem at all "outing" Mike Anane. The scrappers clearly can't stand the guy. Every time Anane's name or picture came up, Awal's crew would begin talking over each other, standing and yelling. That didn't come from me. "HE DEY LIE!" [he lies] It was cried with emotion because they knew what Anane charges for his "photojournalism tours", they know his bogus relationship with the idealist young journalists like Kevin McElvaney, or "BitRot" Bellini, and with Jim Puckett and Lord Chris Smith etc... and they suspected it was part of the "Sodom and Gomorrah" propaganda campaign to evict them from their homes for the Accra Metropolitan Association could take the land over and develop it with hotels, malls, and office complexes.
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