Just republishing Emmanuel E.P. Nyalete's comment to Resource Recycling this weekend. Superbly thoughtful and interesting. He's a laptop repair guru and graduate student studying coding at Georgia Tech... and a former Good Point Recycling staffer and current WR3 associate.
History of Agbogbloshie
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I remember Agbogbloshie as one of the usual places in Accra where the guys from the northern part of the country work. They come knocking from door to door to buy alluminum and bottles and any other scrap item they could get. I remember saving coca-cola bottles that I sold to them to make some extra money for my next football. Over the years, Agbogbloshie has becomes a very compalext informal recycling site. It has grown from the recycling of bottles, glass and alluminun to heavy metalls from tractors and any form of motor vehicle. One of my friends who worked there told me that they prefer motor vehicles because they contained the larger quantity of metals and electrical wires. As Ghana's consumption of electronics grew so has the informal recycling of househould equipments grew.
For over two decades, I have never considered this site to be the largest e-waste dump site in the world until I read the artiles and saw the videos in the mainstream media in Europe and the USA. I was surprised for a few reasons:
1. There are very few electronic items in Agbogbloshie to even consider it as Ghana's locally generated e-waste dump site.
2. The surface area of Agbogbloshie cannot contain the "world's e-waaste" considering the many junk auto parts that are already at the site.
3. The young men who work there use very simple tools and most of the time push carts to haul scrap. From my experience working in a recycling plant, there is no way these young men could haul "millions of tons" of e-waste and process them using hammers and chissels.
However, I acknowledge the fact that there is a problem, but its not about young men taking things apart with primitive tools. Neither is it an import issue. Ghana imports almost everything we use. The problem however is fire-burning wires for the valualble coper.
To find the right solutions for this problem we need the correct diagnosis. We cannot find the right solutions if we keep exagerating the figures and the conditions on the ground. It does not help my country in any way if wrong statistics are published. A few projects have already failed at Agbogbloshie because they based their projects on false data. Incriminating African business men and women for crimes they have not commited will only lead to poverty and hence an increase in the fire pits at Agbogbloshie. Our country depends on these business men and women to provide technology at affordable prices to students and small businesses and hard working families. I am an example of how used electronics help families and young minds to aspire and dream for better tomorrow.
Lets put in a liitle more effort to find the facts and then we will discover that there are so many talented technicians and inverntors in Africa who work hard and all they need is true partnership and opportunity. Thank you.
Emmanuel Nyalete
My own comment follows below
