4 Great Articles on #Agbogbloshie Ghana: Not an e-waste dump, perhaps?

1. Robin Ingenthron ‏@WR3A  7s8 seconds ago

   Impugning Africa's repair refurbish ICT Tech Sector is the worst mistake ever made by an environmental org. Just sayin. Over an over.
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Once again, here are 4 links to articles by 3rd parties who have recognized that hoaxes harm, that Africa's Tech Sector / ICT workers have been impugned, and Africa's recycling workers in Agbogblohsie have been blamed for importing devices which they collected on street corners in Africa's urban centers.  Imported once, second hand, but used for 5-15 years, is not "dumping".

http://therestartproject.org/repair-elsewhere/representations-of-e-waste-matter/

http://discardstudies.com/2015/06/24/criminal-negligence/

http://shanghaiscrap.com/2015/06/anatomy-of-a-myth-the-worlds-biggest-e-waste-dump-isnt/

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/infamous-e-waste-slum-needed-us-got-razed-instead/


And it certainly did not make a lick of sense to bulldoze homes, mosques, and schoolrooms of the Agbobgloshie recycling (and onion farming, and litter collection, and water carrying) community.  The predominantly Dagbani were set up like a bowling pin, knocked down, got to wearing thin.

No white money-hatted cartoon characters have been found or sent to prison in the past ten years, since BAN's "Digital Dump" morphed into Frontline / UBC Vancouver's "millions of tons", which morphed into Greenpeace in 2008 labeling Old Fadama, aka Agbogbloshie, as "Sodom and Gomorrah" and "the largest e-waste dump in the world".  The story just got bigger and bigger, despite our constant cries, and the increasing number of scientific studies that found no evidence at all of "dumping".  None.

The people being arrested, the owners of the seized goods, are Africa's Geeks of Color.   They are bringing affordable electronic communications to inner city Africans, in the face of a European campaign called "Project Eden", the chalkboard-clawing title of Interpol's #greatwhitesavior campaign, and UNEP's Willie Horton poster boy TV repairman, #FreeHurricaneBenson.

We know what happened in Old Fadama because geeks and nerds like Alhassan Ibn Abdalla tweeted and filmed the destruction on #WorldRefugeeDay... because he lives in the real world, not in a TinTin comic, nor in jungles of "Eden".  Geeks are tweeting news that winds up in the articles above on laptops and cell phones imported and repaired by Africa's Tech Sector.  I'm blogging passionately because I KNOW these people, they lived in my HOUSE in Vermont.  They are the best and brightest, and FairTradeRecycling has become like a modern day "underground railroad" for geeksofcolor threatened primarily by environmentalist propaganda.  It's crazy.  It's religious colonization all over again.   Environmentalists are "here to help" by putting black people safely in chains, protecting all of London from scary African tinkerers and nerds.  It's a nutty combination of Roots, Big Bang Theory, and The Shining.  "Heeere's TinTin!"

Here to help

As I originally wrote in my best blog, "Why We Should Export...", republished in Motherboard in 2011, recycling was good, reuse and repair was good.  African and Asian and South American geeks of color were good, creating the most progress the World Bank had ever reported in internet ICT and teledensity access, in the most sustainable and affordable way possible.  With used CRT displays that lasted another 10-15 years, Accra residents were watching the World Cup, watching Colin Powell make the case for the Iraq invasion, watching ads about clean water, and checking their emails... or watching 1970s movies, for common cultural references like "The Shining" (about another mentally disturbed one-note author, played by Jack Nicholson).

Let's environmentalists retrace our steps.  How did we get from speculative concern over "donated" equipment (in fact purchased and inspected by Africans), worth only 20% in scrap of the cost of transport, to demolishing homes on UN #WorldRefugeeDay, under a colonialist Biblical banner #SodomandGomorrah and #Eden?

Sure, I keep writing about the same thing.  But can anyone find a WORSE case of #Charitableindustrialcomplex, #colleteraldamage, #parasitesofthepoor, #saviorcomplex, #unintendedconsequences than BAN and Greenpeace and Blacksmith Institute and UNEP's #Ewastegate?  So horrifically stunning in its reality, putting Africans in European chains for fixing cell phones and TVs?  It is an environmentalist horror show.

Finally an end to dumping of 15 year old city buses on Africa's Eden

"First we caught him listening to Soukous and Highlife.  It was a gateway drug for apologists"