Driverless Used Car and Electronics Imports to Africa

Follow up to the new "Driverless" UNU 2018 Person In Port Report


The headline, “Thousands of tons of e-waste shipped illegally to Nigeria inside used vehicles” was familiar. In my last blog, I gave readers "the fine print".

Almost everything documented by the 2018 UNU's "Person in the Port Project" (2018) report on used electronics imports to Nigeria corresponds with our 4 years of research in Ghana. Bottom line, the importers are presumed innocent. Most purchases are normal and good. The headline focuses on a statistic that 15,000 tons of 60,000 tons “didn’t work”. Put another way, 75% of the imported used electronics are fully functional. More importantly, the report tells us that of the 25% of electronics needing repair, Nigeria's Tech Sector is the best on earth at fixing them. 

"The high skill level of Nigeria’s refurbishing sector, with the ability to fix many technical defects in UEEE at reasonable service cost, also motivates importers to import both functioning and non-functioning electronic equipment to Nigeria." 

- 5.8.1 PIP Report 2018

The 2018 report avoids the “poverty porn” - pics of kids posed on old TVs, etc. - that marred its 2015 report. In almost every respect, the report shows a fairer image of Africa’s Tech Sector. And the most important concession Europe has now made is to concede the 2015 Report's KEY FINDING - motives of "drivers" to export "waste" - has been disproven. Joseph "Hurricane" Benson had no "driver" to put waste into his export containers. The only financial motive that can explain these shipments are intent to reuse and repair.

So the "driverless" waste export theory is busted. Let’s focus first on Ten Things the report gets right.

Science Reporting Confirms What We've Been Saying #Agbogbloshie

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?

By Jon Spaull

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“Welcome to hell”, “The world’s largest e-waste dump” “Inside the hellscape where our computers go to die” — these are all headlines about the Agbogbloshie waste dump in Accra in 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.

Africa Needs Buses and Trolleys

While the NGOs stay stuck as depicting Africa as a place that couldn't possibly be the source of its own junk TVs and computers - despite World Bank data and history of mass communications investments in the 1970s-90s - I thought I'd take a closer look at what we saw in Agbogbloshie.

Metropolitan bus scrap.  They have been towing junk automobiles to Agbogbloshie for so long, you even find tow truck scrap.

And motorcycle scrap, and scrap tires, and car doors.

How Exports of Electronics Get to Agbogbloshie in 6 Easy Steps

At Fair Trade Recycling, we are fans of Dave Hakkens of the Netherlands and his maker & repair-stuff videos.  It was with a mixture of delight and gritted teeth that we watched his new video on Agbogbloshie.

His video "A Free Trip" does portray the ingenuity and skill we tried to document in Africa, and does it with more flair than I could.

But he also opens with the headlines that junk is exported directly to Agbogbloshie by westerners to be dumped.  That's just ridiculous and has been disproven by every study by USITC, MIT, SBC, etc.

So Dave, thanks for seeing people for what they can do rather than for what they cannot do.

But next time, do a little more homework.

1. The goods are exported by African Ex Pats (like Joe Benson) who are in close communication with buyers (#2)
2. The goods are imported by African Tech Sector shops which buy mostly working but also do repair for consumers (#3)
3. The goods are sold to African consumers and businesses.
4. The goods are then USED FOR 5-25 years!  Accra had electricity 50 years ago!  Ghana has 20 television stations!  
5. At the end of 2 decades of use and storage and often re-repair, the "scrap" electronics are collected by scrappers from Old Fadama (not called "Sodom and Gomorrah"), house to house, via pushcart 
6. The scrap is traded, bought and sold, at Agbogbloshie (an automobile scrapyard) based on metals or parts value.

The first item we saw being dismantled at Agbogbloshie was a VCR.  A VCR, Dave.  Try to sell a containerload of VCRs to an African.  Those were everywhere in Africa in the 80s and 90s, but no one imports VCRs today.

See Report at Resource Fever - Global Circular Economy of Strategic Metals (Bo2W) http://www.resourcefever.org/detail/items/global-circular-economy-of-strategic-metals-bo2w-chapter-ghana.html

Step 6 is 15-25 years after Step 1.  Improving testing, or arresting #1 Africans, or boycotting #2 Africans, or selling brand new product to #3 Africans, does absolutely nothing.  Donating money to E-Stewards has zero effect on Step 6.  Even brand new stuff wears out, and according to Africans does so faster than "solid state" used electronics imported from Europe and USA.

Most of the NGO's emphasis is how to somehow stop accidental breakage, non-functioning parts, shipping damage, etc. (7%).  But the point is that the ENTIRE chart above will wind up at a scrapyard SOMEDAY, and most of what's there today was imported decades ago.

American Recycler Rights: Stop Pot Prison Sentences

The past month was spent defending potential clients in Africa, who got dealt a particularly nasty set of hoax documentaries.  We have to defend the people who buy less than 5% of the material we manage, only the best reuse stuff we have, because of their ethnicity.   Clients and even Facebook friends tell me, "I've seen several documentaries about it."

But to the point... Well, who the hell manages Good Point Recycling while I'm off doing this?

Barenaked #PovertyPorn: Venn Diagram Shows Truth of Africa EWaste Market

Pal Adam in Malaysia forwarded this to me, suggesting it was good blog fodder.  And it is, except that it speaks for itself.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/dirty-tourism-cambodia

Here is a story which cannot seem to "speak for itself" to many reporters I meet...

In 4 days I'll be leaving to meet three reporter/documentarians at Agbogbloshie, who are working on a very similar story in Ghana.  I've provided each with some of the same information.  I have shared hard data on the sources of these diagrams, but will still treat it as a "thesis" and look for evidence to confirm or deny the "E-Waste Hoax" from the heart of Agbogbloshie, Ghana.

Here's my thesis:

1. Wealthy OECD nations use brand new computer displays, TVs and cars for about 4 years average (afterwards these go into the "secondary market").
2. CRT displays and cars last an average 15-25 years (depending on hours of use / mileage)
3. Rapidly urbanizing cities like Lagos and Accra have electricity, average per capita incomes of about $3000 per year, and access to television broadcast and internet (and highways).  The purchase price of the electronics is a very high percentage of wages, which supports a vibrant repair infrastructure.
4. Repairpeople (like Joe Benson, Emmanuel Nyaletey, Wahab Odoi) can repair 15 year old electronics sourced in Ghana and Lagos, but make far more money repairing (or finding working) appliances that are 4-5 years old from wealthy nations.  
5. As appliances from the 1990s and 2000s wear out in Ghana and Nigeria, most owners take them to be repaired, but are often convinced instead to buy a newer 5 year old model from London rather than repair their 20 year old appliance from London.
6. The commerce funding the imports of 500+ imported containers per month is the reuse and resale market which sells affordable "good enough" technology for 25% the cost of brand new.

Explaining the circles... New product sales are estimated at 30% of total sales.  That's like Egypt in 2002, and it will change (today new product is a higher percentage of Egyptian markets).   Used electronics products are estimated at 70% of electronics sales.  A small portion of each may go "directly to Agbogbloshie", but it is far more likely (85%-93%) will be used for a decade or more.    Meanwhile, most of the "junk" at the African dump have nothing to do with electronics.

Even if no imports at all come to Accra, the amount of scrap and waste arriving at Agbogbloshie will continue to increase for the next 15 years, based on sales documented by World Bank in 2003.