Two of West-Africa’s economic powerhouses, Nigeria and Ghana, are fast becoming blooming electronic graveyards as tonnes of discarded appliances from all over the world – including the United Kingdom (UK) are being dumped every year. Industry observers claim that thousands of broken television (TV), Personal Computers (PC), mobile phones, microwaves as well as refrigerators are being illegally exported to West Africa and dumped in gigantic landfills like Agbogbloshie and Olusosun in Ghana and Nigeria respectively because it costs less than recycling them in their countries of origin. But interestingly, 41 million tonnes of electronic waste’ worth over £34 billion were discarded globally in 2014, according to a report by United Nations University that claim only 6 million tonnes of that was recycled properly. The UK contributed 1.5 million tonnes of waste to the staggering 11.6 Europe generated last year – putting it behind only Germany as the continent’s greatest contributor.
That dwarfs the 1.9 million tonnes produced by the whole of Africa and yet the continent’s western nations have become a dumping ground for the world’s defunct products. Health practitioners however are of the view that some of the appliances even leak toxic elements such as lead and mercury which harms the environment. Even more worrying is that young men who trawl through the defunct electronics hoping to find something worth selling, are exposed to these harmful elements, according to them. “Developed countries export millions of tonnes of electronic waste annually into developing countries such as Ghana,” the group based in the country claims on its website. Transporting broken or expired electronics to Africa is illegal but brokers exploit a loophole by fraudulently labelling the items as reusable, according to Ruediger Kuehr, head of United Nations University (UNU) who has a strong unequivocal position that Africa is becoming “a graveyard for electronic waste”.
When massive containers arrive in Ghana and Nigeria, they are trucked to remote locations where the locals can buy the products directly without testing them to later sell in markets, Kuehr told MailOnline. He also believes legal shipments can help close the digital divide between Africa and the west but said: ‘If it turns out that this equipment arriving in Africa is no longer of use, there is no longer a market existing or that they are getting real waste… then we are having a real issue.’ In Nigeria, Lagos, has witnesses a huge influx of e-waste in recent times. “Lagos has a large sea port where the items easily slip through, also there is a huge appetite for cheap second hand imported electronics items in the city,” Peter Ejiofor, a dealer in second hand PCs told IPS. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, director of research at Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS), said the trend is exacerbated by the lack of national regulation regarding import rules for used electronic goods.
“There is also weak enforcement of existing related laws; and also a lack of awareness of the risks/potential harmful effects associated with e-waste, coupled with lack of technical capacity for environmentally sound management”, added Fagbohun. These shipments are taking place due to economic reasons. “Recycling in the European Union and the UK costs money. So if a broker successfully collects enough material and sends it to Africa, it could be in their interest because in people in Africa are still paying for this”, Kuehr added. The UK was identified as one of the world’s largest generators of e-waste and ranked fifth in the world in terms of material discarded per person, with each Briton producing 23.5kg every year. It also produced the sixth most e-waste overall and its 1.5 megatons of waste was only 100,000 tonnes less than India which has 20 times the population. The report said that only one-third of e-waste in the UK is recycled through recognised schemes, a figure that must reach 85 per cent by 2019 under European Union rules.
Ben Uzor, with wire reports
