- Tanzania e-waste is growing rapidly and Dar es Salaam is quickly becoming a major informal recycling site.
- The country’s predicament is reflected across East Africa due to exponential uptake of digital products, creating a scenario akin to Agbogbloshie, the infamous 20-acres e-waste dump in Accra, Ghana.
- Often referred to as a “digital dumping ground,” Agbogbloshie receives discarded electronics from various countries, including the United States and Europe.
E-waste and scrap metal are notoriously polluting the environment around the world and the worst hit are third-world countries, and Africa is at the top of the list. Take for instance the infamous Agbogbloshie, a roughly 20-acre scrap yard in Accra the capital city of Ghana.
Over the last decade, Agbogbloshie has become the symbol of this growing crisis, that is, export, dumping and trading of electronic wastes. And while this humongous dump site may be the biggest but it is far from been the only e-waste trouble zone in Africa, on the contrary, e-waste has become Africa’s modern development nemesis.
You have the likes of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in the East that also habour enormous e-waste dump sites. The story is no better down south, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa are equally affected, e-waste has Sub-Saharan Africa in a chock hold of poisonous gases from informal recycling of e-waste.
“Most of what’s burned is automobile tires, which are lined up for hundreds of feet and left to smolder, producing dangerous levels of carbon monoxide and other hazardous substances. Later, workers will gather up the steel left behind,” describes the poisonous gases ordeal.
The Agbogbloshie curse: Tanzania’s e-waste dilemma
The fast growing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and rapid turn-over in technology is creating a growing e-waste stream not only in industrialized but also in developing countries like Tanzania” reads the e-Waste Assessment Tanzania report prepared by UNIDO.
The report acknowledges that the challenge of e-waste “is of greater concern in developing countries because most of these countries lack the capacity for handling and recycling the hazardous materials contained in e-waste.”
As we have seen the case of the Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, a similar plight faces most all cities across Africa. In Tanzania, disposal of e-waste takes place along-side municipal waste, collected and mixed up during the collection process, e-waste ends up in general dumpsites around the major cities in the country.
Unlike the situation in Ghana where the e-waste is collected and dumped separately, here, in Tanzania, the situation is further complicated by the mixing of e-waste with municipal waste. So, the informal recycle happens in very harsh, dirty, smelly dumpsite.
Luckily, with the growing market for scrap metal, the problem of mixing wastes is slowly resolving itself. Most waste collectors are increasingly aware of the value of insulated wires, especially copper and electronics in general. As a result, they separate the e-waste from the municipal waste to make a buck on the side.
Unfortunately, UNIDO admits that; “The magnitude and flow of e-waste generation is not well known in Tanzania. Only a few studies exist, which contain a rough estimate of the installed base of computers and e-waste generated and analyzes the stakeholder set-up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.”
The report further notes that; “There is inadequate information on the existing practices and strategies on e-waste management in the country.”
The report, which provides the findings of an e-waste assessment study conducted by the Cleaner Production Centre of Tanzania in collaboration with EMPA of Switzerland within the framework of the “UNIDO e-waste initiative for Tanzania,” is authoritative providing a reliable overview of the e-waste landscape in Tanzania.
In Tanzania, reads the report in part, the average life of new computers was found to be 4 years in government and private sector and 8 years in private households and small businesses while the average life of second hand computers was found to be around 5 years.
“Considering the fact that the current disposal practice of e-waste in Tanzania is mainly storage, this implies that there will soon be an increasing growth of e-waste stream in the country as more and more ICT equipment reaches their end-of life,” UNIDO warns.
According to UNIDO; future computer mass flow trends based on linear and exponential growth indicate that the potential e-waste generation from computers could be between 250,000 and 800,000 computer units, which is equivalent to 3,000 – 9,500 tonnes.
Further still, “Not addressing the fact of growing e-waste volumes bears the risk of a developing informal sector, with all its social and environmental drawbacks…” the experts warn, falling short of bluntly pointing out that, if Tanzania does not address the growing e-waste problem formally, it will soon become home of the next Agbogbloshie.
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The value chain of Africa’s e-waste
The value chain of electronic waste (e-waste) starts from rich, developed countries as top notch electronics and ends up as second hand, used e-waste in Africa.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 85 percent of the e-waste dumped in Ghana and other parts of West Africa is produced in Ghana and West Africa.
In other words, ending the export of used electronics from the wealthy developed world won’t end the burning in Agbogbloshie. The solution must come from West Africa itself and the people who depend upon e-waste to make a living. Agbogbloshie is not a pleasant place to work. Most of the site is threaded by muddy lanes that cross in front of dozens of small sheds holding recycling businesses.
Inside, owners, their families and employees manually dismantle everything from automobiles to microwave ovens. E-waste, defined as old consumer electronics, is actually a very small part of the overall waste stream in these lanes, filled with the clanking of hammers on metal. And phones, laptops and old TVs aren’t the only things that can be dangerous when recycled improperly.
These dump sites employ mostly teens and young men in their early 20s, who while seemingly still health, they are on the path to extreme respiratory complications as they age.
These youth deal with the burning of anything with insulated copper from car tires to USB cables. Once the plastic is burnt out in poisonous fumes, they clean out and straighten the remains, the coveted copper wire.
“Depending on when the insulation was made, the smoke emitted can contain dioxin, heavy metals and other pollutants that pose a strong threat to human health,”
Consider this report by the UN Environment Programme, which found that 70 percent of imported electronics to Africa constitute used goods, 20 percent need repairs and 15 percent is out right unsellable and bound for the dump.
