2014 / Editorial / Environmental

Agbogbloshie

  • Photographer
    Bruno Tamiozzo

Agbogbloshie dumpsite in Ghana's capital, Accra, is one of the main hubs for electronic waste (e-waste) disposal in West Africa, particularly from old computers and computer monitors. Since the late 1990s, countries around the globe have been sending millions of tons of e-waste to be processed each year on the site, which is home to more than 40,000 people. Men, women, and a significant amount of children, with no protection, attempt to recover power supply housings, circuit boards, wires and small capacitors by crudely breaking, smashing or burning discarded circuit boards, cathode ray tubes, and other discarded electronics. In 2011, the BBC reported that over seven million containers of e-waste are exported each year from the United Kingdom, alone.