Year: 2013

‘This is not a good place to live’: inside Ghana’s dump for e-waste

The orange flesh of a papaya is like an oval gash in the landscape at Agbogbloshie, Ghana’s vast dumping site for electronic waste, where everything is smeared and stained with mucky hues of brown and sooty black. A woman kneels among the carcasses of discarded computer monitors, scooping the fruit’s flesh for workers hungry from a morning’s work scavenging to eat.

If the appliances at Agbogbloshie were not being dismantled – plucked of their tiny nuggets of copper and aluminium – some of them could almost be technology antiques. Old VHS players, cassette recorders, sewing machines, computers from the 1980s and every period since lie haphazardly on large mounds in the dump, which stretches as far as the eye can see.

See photos of electronic waste dumping in Ghana here

“Electric waste comes here from all over the world – but especially from Europe,” says Karim (29) who, like almost all the scrap dealers at Agbogbloshie, originally comes from northern Ghana but has been salvaging, buying and selling at the dump for 10 years. “We get a lot of health problems here, but we manage, because we need the money.”

Last week, the UN’s “Solving the E-Waste Problem” initiative (Step), which was set up in 2007 to tackle the world’s growing crisis of electronic waste, warned that the global volume of such refuse is set to grow by 33% over the next four years. Much of it will be dumped in sites such as those in Agbogbloshie, increasing the risk of land contamination with lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and flame retardants.

Agbogbloshie seems chaotic, apocalyptic in places, but there is an order to the large, desolate, rubbish-strewn site. At one side, boys and young men gather in groups, picking their way through piles of old hard drives, untangling wires, and breaking up old air-conditioning units and even irons.

Abdoullaye (19) and a group of other teenage boys sit under makeshift iron shelters on the upturned cases of old PC monitors, working at a pile of e-waste with chisels and pliers and by hand.

The boys are surrounded by rows of rusty chest freezers, each one dangling a heavy padlock. Inside them, they store the fruits of their labour – piles of copper and aluminium – until the metal is bought by traders.

Ghanaians working in Agbogbloshie. (Pic: Wikimedia/Marlenenapoli)

“I came here from Tamale five years ago,” said Abdoullaye, who wears turned-up blue jeans and a blue and white striped polo shirt smeared with dirt. “I make between two and five cedis (£0.50 to £1.30) each day, and each month I send 50 cedis (£13) back to my family in the north. I would like to go back home, but my family needs the money, so I stay. We get too many problems here – sometimes I have to go to the hospital. It’s not good for us.”

Deeper into the heart of Agbogbloshie, huge plumes of foul-smelling smoke rise up from three large fires, where the dismantled items are burned to remove traces of plastic, leaving the metal behind. The fumes are head-pounding, but the men, women and children weaving in and out of the fires seem oblivious. Goats sleep deeply beside the upturned remains of a tree, now strewn with plastic rubbish.

Roles are gender divided at Agbogbloshie. Women and girls wander the sprawling site, hawking peeled oranges, water sachets and cooked food. Many have tiny babies wrapped in cloth tied tightly to their backs, all inhaling the toxic fumes. There are special jobs for children, who trawl the site with magnets tied on to the end of a piece of string, picking up any tiny scraps of metal left behind in the dirt.

In the centre of the dump, a clearing has been turned into a football pitch, and two teams are in the midst of a match. Agbogbloshie is not just a site for trading, burning and dumping electrical waste; it’s also home to thousands of people, who carry on their lives and raise their children in the midst of its filth and fumes. There are shacks dotted throughout the central area of the dump. In the doorway of one, next to a large heap of discarded computer hard drives, is a large, grubby cloth poster of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Ghanaians have nicknamed Agbogbloshie “Sodom and Gomorrah,” after two condemned Biblical cities, but its residents take a less hostile view.

“This is not a good place to live. But we don’t want the people in Europe and all those places to stop sending the waste,” said Karim. “This is a business centre, and we are using the money we make here to help our families to have a better life.”

12 years ago

An African president’s Christmas wish list

You see, Africans are an odd bunch. Barack Obama is winning elections using Facebook and next thing every African politician wants to win elections by a landslide using Facebook. My friend and brother Kim Jung-un is putting a rebellious Uncle in his place and next thing AU Summits are full of nervous jokes about the endangered Uncle species. The Egyptians are gathering in Tahrir Square to pull Mubarak down and next thing elements in Nigeria are obsessed with turning every open patch of ground into a revolutionary square. South Sudan manages to earn its independence, next thing every hamlet in Tanzania is raucously debating colour choices for an independence flag.

Copycats – that’s the problem with Africa. We haven’t got minds of our own. We are always copying everything we see, good or bad. Treasonable uprisings, immoral music videos, Western sexual practices – nothing is above being copied by the youth of this continent.

In my country you now have a group who think themselves an African Tea Party. They think that by repeatedly falsely labeling me a Communist they can turn me into one.

Every time I speak of my commitment towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for my country, these disgruntled elements start to snicker. And then cartoons show up on the internet, thinly disguised caricatures of me proclaiming that what I actually meant by MDGs was Murders, Drugs and Guns.

I let it go, because I am not a tyrant; I am a democratically elected President.

But it really does get to me. Because that is how people start getting ideas to throw a man out of power – it starts with anonymous comments on the blogs and snide cartoons on Facebook. Ask Brother Zuma to tell you how his troubles started, with the shower-head cartoons. Now see how much hate the man has to deal with because of minor renovations to his crumbling homestead.

If I go ahead and invoke state powers and order prosecution on the grounds of libel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International jump on the case, desperate to justify their generous funding. They call me names. But I let it go, because I am not a tyrant; I am a democratically elected President – and by a landslide too.

My Nigerian brother, the democratically elected Goodluck Jonathan, once cried out that he is the most abused President in the world. Do you know what it must have taken for him to say that out loud? Do you know how painful it is to watch disgruntled elements distort your every word, make fun of you at every turn?

Look at Brother Uhuru in Kenya, also democratically elected, like me, who has to suffer the indignities of being treated like a common war criminal.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan (L) and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. (Pic: AFP)

If we continue this way, very soon no one is going to want to be an African Head of State. We will have no leadership, no government. And you know what that means. Chaos. Disaster. We will slip back into the dark ages.

I don’t want that to happen. Neither do you.

Therefore my wish is for Africa’s new generation of freedom fighters and activists to realise that the times have changed, and that the weapons that were perfected in the fight against yesterday’s tyrants cannot and must not be deployed against today’s generation of democratic statesmen. I know Brothers Goodluck and Uhuru, we are not Brothers Abacha or Mobutu, and we do not deserve to be treated like those men.

No we don’t. We are men who have an eye on the verdict of history. It has just dawned on me: now that there’s a Madiba-shaped hole in the heart of Africa, I would really like nothing more than to be the man of destiny to fill that space.

I have a lot more in common with Madiba than you’re willing to acknowledge. You look at me and think I’ve been President for X years – failing to understand one simple truth; that I’ve actually been a Prisoner all that time.

What you call the Presidential Palace, I call a Maximum Security Prison – without the hard labour of course, and with a few conjugal visits thrown in (when Her Excellency is not trying to avoid me).

I spend my days and nights holed up in this place, trapped by the endless “security reports” that say the streets are full of mobs of tweeters, snipers and revolutionaries; all rooting for my downfall, thirsting for my blood.

To evade them, I am forced to be a Prisoner.

I need to get out of this prison. Because Africa deserves another Nelson Mandela.

My long walk to freedom has now started. Someday soon, dear friends and comrades, brothers and sisters, I shall be free from these chains of duty and service to a most ungrateful country.

It is my fervent – and final – wish, that, at that time when I am cast out of this stuffy and joyless Prison into the exceedingly fresh air of freedom, my friend and Brother Mo Ibrahim will not have given up on his laudable idea of handsomely rewarding those rare African statesmen who do what needs to be done when the ovation is at its loudest.

Tolu Ogunlesi is a Nigerian journalist and newspaper columnist. He has written for the Financial Times, CNN, the London Independent, Al Jazeera and The Africa Report, amongst others. Between 2009 and 2011 he was features editor at NEXT, a Lagos-based daily newspaper. Follow him on Twitter.

12 years ago

Solar lamps flying off the shelves in Kenya

It’s hard to know where to look in the crowded interior of the Murenju general store. The entrance is flanked by multicoloured mattresses stacked like surreal sandwiches. Rolls of linoleum flooring stand under shelves groaning with speakers, while cooking pots hang from the rafters amid the bunting of adverts for a pay-TV service.

Sally Kayoni, the shopkeeper, stands on tiptoe to be seen over a counter lined with car batteries, radios and DVD players. Yet the prime retail space on the eye-level shelf behind her is given over to small solar lamps presented in a neat row. They get pride of place because they are among her bestsellers.

“I had so many customers asking for them,” she says. Each month she sells more than 200 of the simple devices, which cost a little over £6 and when charged in direct sunlight will light a small room from dusk to dawn.

The 34-year-old runs one of the busiest shops in Bomet, a fast-growing town of four streets and clanking construction two hours’ drive from Kenya’s world-famous safari destination, the Masai Mara. With its paved roads and electricity, it is typical of east Africa’s new boom towns, servicing a hinterland of small farms that operate off the grid, accessible by dirt roads plied by motorcycle taxis.

Kayoni first started to notice the solar lamps when they were brought to the area in 2012 in a striking canary-yellow van owned by SunnyMoney, a subsidiary of the UK-based charity SolarAid.

They were initially distributed through the area’s schools, where head-teachers were persuaded to pitch the lamps to parents as a way of helping children to do their homework. One year on, a conventional market for the lights has been created and they are sold in shops.

(Pic: Patrick Bentley)

A business owned by a charity may sound novel, but rather than giving away solar lamps, SunnyMoney has deliberately chosen a commercial strategy, in the belief that this way its simple but effective technology can find an enduring foothold.

“We take a business approach because that is what this market needs,” says Steve Andrews, chief executive of the not-for-profit company. He wants to see solar technology follow in the footsteps of mobile phones, which have become ubiquitous in Africa over the past decade, thanks to a support network of retailers and services.

SunnyMoney has sold close to one million lights, making it the biggest retailer of solar lamps in sub-Saharan Africa. On average it makes a loss of 13p on each light it sells, but when the goal is to open up new markets by selling as many as possible – rather than make an immediate return – that is a sign of success.

“Philanthropy allowed us to be aggressive and pursue markets that didn’t exist before,” says Andrews, “because we don’t have to answer to shareholders seeking an immediate return.”

Some 40 000 lights have been sold in the Bomet area alone and SunnyMoney is on course to break even in the next two years, at which point profits will be ploughed back into the parent charity SolarAid. What some donors might find controversial is the chief executive’s belief that people value more a product they have to pay for than something given away.

Access to electricity
Much of sub-Sahara Africa is littered with the detritus of good intentions – projects from refrigerated fish-packing factories on desert lakes, to secondhand computers – that failed to meet real needs in the communities where they landed.

Fewer than 20% of Kenyan homes have access to electricity and are therefore forced to use fossil fuels such as kerosene for lighting. Households that give up the kerosene lamps they used previously can expect to make a saving of roughly £40 a month, which can be spent on school fees, food and other goods. “Previously the money was leaving the community and going to global oil companies [through kerosene sales],” Andrews says. “Now it is going to local businesses.”

The educational impact of thousands of solar lights in once-dark homes can be measured around Bomet. Christopher Sigei, the area education officer, has been doing just that: “In the evening it has been working small miracles.”

Asked about local access to electricity, he smiles and describes it as “zero point something”. The average mark in national exams in the poorest neighbourhood, he points out, has risen from 215 to 233 in the first year since the lights went on sale.

These kinds of benefits have turned headteachers such as Stanley Rugut into solar evangelists. The beaming 58-year-old, who has sold about 6 000 lamps, drives around the area’s rutted roads in a battered old estate car with leopard-skin seat covers and a solar panel on the dashboard. “I like to charge the lights while I’m driving,” he explains.

He talks about old model S1 and S2, as well as newcomer light system Sun King, with the same enthusiasm with which smartphone owners debate the pros and cons of new brands and handsets. Rugut has been rewarded for his hard work with lights rather than cash, and his skills as a salesman have allowed him to amass dozens of the lamps.

“I have all of them, and people are always coming round and very excited to see them,” he says.

Meanwhile, back at the Murenju general store, the one thing you will not find is kerosene. “I no longer sell it,” says Kayoni. “After I started selling these,” she points at the solar lamps, “there was no one asking for it any more.”

Daniel Howden for the Guardian

12 years ago

Mandela film gets three Golden Globe nominations

A film about the life of former South African president Nelson Mandela titled Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom received three Golden Globe nominations on Thursday.

The nominations were announced in Los Angeles, the company that produced the film, Videovision Entertainment, said in a statement.

Idris Elba, who plays Mandela in the film, was nominated for Best Actor and the film’s music composer, Alex Heffes, scooped a nomination in the Best Original Score category.

Irish rock band U2 was nominated for the Best Original Song for Ordinary Love, a song written specially for the film.

The film’s producer Anant Singh said it was an honour to have received three Golden Globe nominations. This was a first for a South African film.

Elba also received a nomination for Best Actor in a Mini-Series made for Television for his role in the television series, Luther. “We congratulate Idris on his amazing performance in the film and his double nomination, and we congratulate Alex and U2 on receiving this recognition,” said Singh.

The 2014 Golden Globes take place on Sunday 12 January.

12 years ago

Step up in honour of Madiba, South Africa

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realised. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

For far too long, as a nation we’ve watched our father, Nelson Mandela, cling to life even when there was so little life left to cling to. I remember being shocked by how disoriented and shrunken he looked during the 2010 World Cup. But he’s had a full, rich life, I reasoned. His service to our nation, remarkable.

Yet, he clung to life for another three years because, as a nation, we would not let him go. We needed him still because he had become, over these last 20 years, an embodiment of the force that keeps us moving forward, however haltingly. He had come to represent our Hope.

Without it we feared we would not withstand the protracted, agonising birth of a vibrant democracy. He was a symbol of the triumph of the will of the people over oppression and indignity. A symbol of courage. A symbol of the power of forgiveness. A symbol of the resilience of the human spirit and a reminder that the desire to succeed should always be matched by a determination to stand up again each time life brings you to your knees. However deeply divided we may be as a nation, on one matter we remained united. The day this rich African earth, with its rolling hills and much too wide sky welcomed Nelson Mandela to its breast, was the day we as a nation were blessed.

His passing will see many voices raised in lament, and as many raised in celebration of his life. It will see a near beatification of the man. The adoring voices will finally dull enough for us to hear the murmurs of dissent. The voices that decry. That avow his role in our continued suffering. That is the point that you and I, who value his contribution and understand just how much he has made possible for each of us, need to remember: that while Nelson Mandela was at the helm, he had with him an able crew. South Africa’s slaying of the Monster of Apartheid was not a one-man show. His achievement could never have been possible without the contribution of millions of South Africans.

As a nation, WE made it happen.

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”

His death comes at a crucial time in our history. We’re an angry nation. Disillusioned. Divided. Nkandla continues to sour our mouths. State coffers continue to be plundered while millions still live in near inhumane conditions. Many of us view our unstatesman-like president as little more than a moron. Elections loom, like a bank of angry clouds on the horizon. We’re plagued by uncertainty and more and more, we have the sense that South Africa is roiling. One small catalyst away from a massive implosion.

It is moments like these that, throughout history, have birthed leaders. True leaders. Sons and daughters of South Africa, step up. The shoes you have to fill are massive, but as Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Volcano Drum Majorettes perform in honour of Nelson Mandela on December 7 2013 outside his old home in Vilakazi Street, Soweto. (Pic: Gallo)

Hamba Kahle, Tata Madiba. A nation mourns, but we shall celebrate your legacy by fighting the good fight. For you. For ourselves. And for the generations to come. Your courage lives on in each son and daughter of South Africa.

“Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.”

Saaleha Bhamjee is a writer, social media addict, confectioner and mother of five from Benoni, South Africa. She is a columnist for The Review, an East Rand publication. Visit her blog here.