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7 The Import of Secondhand Computers and the

Dilemma of Electronic Waste

After the World Summit on the Information Society concluded in 2005,

the attention of the national government and the business community in
Ghana turned to a number of relevant concerns: the overtaxed electricity
infrastructure, the influx of computers and other electronics as a burden
on waste-handling systems, and the financial flows necessary for the business of enabling connectivity. Each of these issues illustrates a creeping
awareness of the materiality of the Internet in Ghana countering a dominant rhetoric at WSIS that celebrated the transcendence of the material
that would follow from joining the information society. At WSIS, the
instantaneous connection of the new network technologies was defined as
a triumph over constraints of space and time.1 The focus on information
at the conference, as something formless and inexhaustible and to be made
available to all of humankind, served as a savvy way to avoid all manner
of intractable resource scarcity issues. This chapter works through some
further issues of the political economy of the global Internet similar in
scope to those raised in the previous chapter. However, by examining the
hard infrastructural issues confronted in the actual build-out of Internet
access in Ghana, this chapter serves as its counterpoint.
The primary substantive focus of the following sections is the emergent,
ad hoc trade in secondhand computers imported from the United States
or Europe by Ghanaian transnational family businesses. What is not considered in this chapter are some of the matters of Internet policy and
network infrastructure that more regularly appear in academic analysis of
technology and political regimes in the Global South. In Ghana there were
some undoubtedly critical changes in national telecom policy in the
early 1990s that paved the way for Internet access in general and the
Internet cafs in particular. The subsequent founding of local Internet


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service providers (ISPs), the physical network and its management, and the
particular interactions between Internet caf owners and the ISPs are additional topics in this space that potentially might have been considered in
these pages. The omission of this history is not meant to indicate its irrelevance; rather, these topics are especially well covered elsewhere (see Foster
et al. 2004; Wilson 2006). By contrast, the computers that equip the Internet cafs in Accra and that are an essential conduit to the Internet have a
perhaps unexpected story of arrival and circulation in Ghana that has not
yet been told. Furthermore, examining the circulation of these machines
helps to translate the material ambiguity of the Internet to the concreteness of material objects. Tracing their movement and the actors involved
in their import, sale, and disposal touches on matters of national politics
within Ghana, state-to-state relations, as well as global economic trends.
In the Internet cafs, property tags remaining on many of the Internet
caf computers identified schools, businesses, and government offices in
the United States and Europe as the source for this equipment. The property tags I encountered and documented included ones for the New York
Public Library, Anne Arundel Community College (in Maryland), the
United States Environmental Protection Agency, St. Marys College (in the
United Kingdom), the University of Iowa, as well as tags written in Italian
and Dutch. Such machines were likely considered obsolete and cleared out
en masse as part of an effort to update IT facilities in these US and European
institutions. The machines themselves were several development cycles
older than the state of the art. It took seven years or more from the
moment when a computer first appeared in the market to when it arrived
at the Internet caf.2 The discovery of these tags in the course of fieldwork
inspired this effort to trace and explain the circulation of these machines.
It ultimately proved to be an illuminating and novel way to explore the
political economy of the Internet in Ghana while maintaining a direct and
materially grounded tie to the cafs themselves.
The import and resale of secondhand computers has played an underrecognized role in the success of Accras Internet cafs as a model of public
access to the Internet. Affordable and reliable equipment is a basic necessity any Internet caf requires in order to sustain itself financially. Such
equipment must withstand the often heavy use cycles, in some cases
running for twenty-four hours solid in the setting of the Internet caf.
However, the upfront equipment investment must also be low enough that

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 161

the occasional and unpredictable motherboard-destroying voltage spikes,

periodic network and electricity outages, and repair costs can be absorbed
by the business venture. These needs were met by Ghanaian traders
through the development of this new distribution process, the trade in
secondhand computers. This trade leveraged the short cycle of equipment
obsolescence that is an established part of how Western (and especially US)
consumer cultures regard electronics and high-tech commodities (Slade
In light of the ongoing discussion of marginalization that threads
through this book, what is especially notable is the way these material
requirements (unreliable infrastructure, twenty-four-hour use, and cost
constraints) came to be addressed in Ghana by novel provisioning and
distribution strategies rather than through product design. This may ultimately prove to be a larger trend whereby marginalized regions and their
consumer cultures that are shut off from forums for influencing design
proper (i.e., in the multinational corporations that initially define the
specs, manufacturing process, and price points for these computers) instead
find opportunities for agency and innovation in these later stages of a
technologys life cycle. Ruth Cowans influential work on the history of
domestic cooking and heating technologies sets a precedent for considering distribution channels, manufacturing, and broader industry structures
as critical to the success of a technology with consumers (Cowan 1987).
In the current case this process of innovation was tied to the circumstances
of a market largely invisible to or considered nonviable from the viewpoint
of industry centers.
The broader ecosystem of distribution, repair, and disposal is necessary
for the material support of Accras Internet cafs. These cafs exist in the
way they do because this supply of affordable machines is available. The
nature of this supply furthermore had consequences for how users within
the caf engaged with the technology. Through this informal distribution
channel, these computers arrived in Ghana lacking, at first, a strong
framing narrative to indicate how users were expected to meaningfully or
effectively employ them. The interpretive possibilities of the technology
were not intercepted by dominant powers of the state or by foreign aid
agencies. In an alternate scenario of state- or NGO-sponsored public access
initiatives (such as the telecenters movement; see Roman and Colle 2002)
efforts to shape Internet use may be carried out through training regiments


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and can also entail censoring and precluding certain uses that are deemed
illegitimate by funders and organizers. Multinational corporations that
produce computing technology (such as Dell, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, etc.)
may also intervene and shape interpretations through advertising and
marketing campaigns but their involvement in Accra was minimal as indicated by a lack of advertising, retail outlets, and sales offices there. Arriving
through the back door of the global trade system, users were left to make
sense of computers and the Internet drawing on the sorts of resources they
had at hand. They did so specifically through small media formats (rumor),
peer relationships, and other kinds of institutions (such as churches and
related structures of belief) as the previous chapters have testified.
That the international circulation of secondhand computers appears, so
far, to be beyond the interest and attention of the high-tech sector is likely
due to the fact that this postpurchase trade represents no additional contribution to corporate revenues. Furthermore, the work of individuals and
businesses that make up this industry in Ghana was carried out without
coordination by any associative body, without a voice representing their
interests to the government or to the media. The industry was not much
more than an aggregation of traders and trading families. Many of its key
players lived or traveled overseas for much of the year. However, this trade
in secondhand electronics has recently become very visible in a very selective way through coverage in Western media outlets of the electronic waste
(e-waste) problem in developing countries. Ghana, along with Nigeria and
China, are the countries typically singled out for attention. The coverage
so far has included an Emmy-nominated Frontline documentary broadcast
on PBS in the United States on June 23, 2009, titled Ghana: Digital
Dumping Ground,3 an article in National Geographic titled High-Tech
Trash,4 and a glossy photo slideshow of the Agbogbloshie dump site in
Accra on the Web site of the New York Times.5 US-based environmental
organizations, including Basel Action Network (an NGO dedicated to the
e-waste issue) and Greenpeace, have fueled and shaped some of this attention.6 In a strategic overhaul of the terminology for describing this import
process, used computers have come to be referred to as toxic cyber waste
(Puckett et al. 2005, 2) and those involved in the trade as operating in a
shadowy industry that exploits regulatory loopholes7 with little awareness of the health and ecological harm brought on their compatriots and
their homeland.

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 163

That the trade in secondhand computers has, as of late, come to be

framed through this new discourse of e-waste rather than the previously
dominant metaphor of the digital divide has certain implications for shifting political will on some relevant issues of international trade. The trade
in secondhand goods, in particular, has come under the scrutiny of a
number of national governments in Africa. New legislation has been proposed in recent years to alter duty calculations and enact new standards
that place penalties on this industry. In Ghana the overtaxed electricity
grid is a key issue that comes into play. On a visit in 2007 I witnessed for
myself the crisis of rolling blackouts as low water levels left the principle
source of electricity generation, the Akosombo Dam, at well below capacity
in a country developing an increasingly insatiable appetite for electricity.
One tangible action is Ghanas recently passed ban on the import of secondhand refrigerators initially scheduled to go into effect in January 2011
but then delayed to January 2013. This was justified as a measure to stop
a non-necessity that is especially prone to electricity overconsumption.8
This measure impinges on the secondhand computer import business
because importers often put refrigerators alongside televisions, stereos, and
computers in the same shipping containers. Despite quite distinct functionality, both commodities flow through this same distribution channels,
are often sold side by side in shops, and belong to a single commodity
category from the perspective of importers and retailers.
For now there appears to be no serious discussion in Ghana to extend
the ban from refrigerators to computers or other secondhand electronics
or to impose or raise import duties on these goods. In relation to the rest
of the continent, Ghana remains an especially easy country to import
computers into. The duties that are officially listed in Ghanas most recent
customs tariff schedules show 0 percent import duty calculated on computers.9 This applies to CPU units, any kind of computer monitor (CRTs as
well as LCDs), and computer printers. There is also 0 percent import duty
on parts for any of these categories of equipment as well. It should be
noted that no distinction is drawn between used and new machines within
the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (shortened
to Harmonized System [HS]), a standard employed internationally as a
system of names and numbers for classifying traded products. Customs
officers do, however, determine a monetary value at the point of entry,
ultimately drawing such a distinction. A standard 12.5 percent VAT tax is


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the only money collected by the government (apart from a 1 percent processing fee) on these high-tech commodities. By comparison other commonly imported electronics, in addition to the VAT tax, are charged an
import duty of either 10 percent (for refrigerators, televisions) or 20 percent
(for energy-sucking air-conditioning units) of their assessed value. For
importers able to secure NGO status and who are bringing computers into
the country to be donated to schools or other educational institutions, the
VAT tax can be waived entirely.10 By contrast, elsewhere on the continent,
Uganda recently passed a total ban on the import of secondhand computers along with a range of other secondhand electronics, explicitly pointing
to lack of waste-handling facilities as the reason, though the government
has more recently been backtracking on the planned computer ban.11
Kenya and Zambia have also recently begun considering such legislation.12
This is a reversal from the kind of international political pressure around
the turn of the millennium that called on low-GDP countries to reduce or
eliminate import duties on computing equipment in the interest of facilitating IT literacy among their citizenry. It is perhaps also an indication of
the success of those policies in bringing so many computers into the
country that they are now coming to be recognized as a waste and disposal
Strategies of Transnational Family Businesses in the Secondhand
Electronics Trade
The import of secondhand electronics from the West to Ghana was a procedural innovation. It was sparked by the recognition of a growing supply
of surplus, well-functioning machines that were seen as low value or even
waste in the West, a supply then cultivated to be efficiently and profitably
redirected to Ghana. Ghanaian migrants who kept a foot in both worlds
played a critical role in facilitating this process through the formation and
coordination of small family businesses that operated across national
borders. There is an extensive literature on transnationalism that examines
the kinds of interconnected social units that escape being determined and
defined by the framework of a single nation-state (Ong and Nonini 1997;
Levitt 2001; Smith and Guarnizo 2002; Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004;
Kivisto 2003). These social units do not necessarily constitute brand-new
social forms but rather rework the more conventional orderings of families

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 165

(Bryceson and Vuorela 2002), political parties, social movements (Guarnizo,

Portes, and Haller 2003), or businesses. The family businesses maintaining
a link between Ghana and abroad epitomize this concept. Their success
rested on navigating and patching together the policies and opportunities
of two countries and mapping a course between divergent consumer cultures. Business owners sought profitability naturally but also ways to
employ and provide an income for multiple family members
Although the number of Ghanaians migrating internationally has been
steadily increasing since independence in 1957, there is a sense that
especially desirable destination countries have become increasingly restrictive, barring all but the most affluent and well-connected Ghanaians. This
perception likely follows in part from the fact that the population of Ghanaians desiring migration opportunities has become larger and more
diverse (Goody and Groothues 1977; Peil 1995). Over the years, the desire
among Ghanaians to migrate out of Ghana or to return has been punctuated by government changeovers and other key events. The severe economic decline and famine of the 1980s prompted large numbers of
Ghanaians to leave. Certain events and the policy changes of foreign states
have also shaped and shifted the flow of voluntary labor migrants. The
policies of the British government enacted in the early 1970s ended the
prioritization of immigrants from British Commonwealth countries such
as Ghana. More recently, the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent economic decline in the United States
have added further restrictions. There is also a perception in Ghana that
Muslim travelers are particularly unwelcome. One response has been the
turning of attention to a more diverse set of destination countries with
South Africa, Saudi Arabia, China, and Malaysia among others emerging
as alternatives that put up fewer barriers and restrictions on entry (Burrell
The ongoing scarcity of travel opportunities has contributed to the
status and prestige of Ghanaians who have gone abroad and returned and
who were known colloquially as burgers (or bOgas as it is sometimes spelled
in Akan/Twi orthography). This term is an abbreviation of Hamburger and
its literal meaning is a reference to one who lives in Hamburg, Germany,
a city that hosts a large community of Ghanaians. The term has come to
be more broadly used to refer to Ghanaians returning from any Western
country. The La Paz area (home of the Sky Harbour Internet caf) was also


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an area where I was told that many bOgas were operating secondhand
electronics shops out of storefronts. As far as how family structure relates
to the organization of these businesses it was generally a bOga who was the
primary owner and manager of the enterprise, the one who had invested
his own capital as the initial start-up money for the venture. Siblings or
nieces and nephews of the owner often did the in-country management
of the business.
For example, one young shopkeeper Samuel who sold electronics that
his uncle imported from the United Kingdom characterized the figure of
the bOga positively as one who is independent and who has experienced
things. He added that such a person knows business. The bOga has people
working for him rather than working for someone else. This was an enviable position that Samuel also aspired to. However, a more negative perception was that bOgas could be snobbish. This is how it was put by a scrap
metal dealer named Ibrahim who works the other end of this commodity
flow. Skepticism about whether the status of these bOgas in Ghana was
justified was evident in casual conversations and in representations in
works of popular culture. For example, in a recent hip-life song titled,
bOga, bOga, the musician Sarkodie riffs at length on the way bOgas claim
a certain social superiority that is unwarranted given the reality of the
very low status work such travelers often end up doing abroad. As
the lyrics note, Some bathe old ladies, wash underwear. Questioning
the assumption of an automatic improvement in life circumstances by a
move abroad, the song later suggests that if these bOgas had stayed in
Ghana they would have completed school, would have been employed
as a manager at Tigo. Tigo is one of the new mobile phone network providers in Ghana and employment there (as with the other providers) is
employed as a sign of making it professionally. Nonetheless, by whatever
means Ghanaians made their way while living abroad, the move abroad
did prove in some cases to be a viable route for capital accumulation and
for gaining certain advantages in trade as demonstrated by these importing
Data on computer imports from 2004 to 2009 obtained from the
Customs, Excise, and Preventative Services of Ghana confirms that the
trade in secondhand computers is, by and large, moving along the known
labor outward migration routes of Ghanaians. In 2009 the top four countries from which computers were shipped were also the countries known

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 167

to have especially large populations of Ghanaian expatriates: the United

States, followed by the United Kingdom, then the Netherlands, and
Germany (see table 7.1).13
Visiting the many small shops that sold secondhand electronics in the
neighborhoods of La Paz and Newtown and talking to traders there confirmed not only that Ghanaians living overseas were facilitating and
funding these imports, but also that most of the employees involved in
such businesses were relatives. Generally the boss or general manager of
the business was the one who did the work of traveling between Europe
or the United States and Ghana collecting the items to be imported and
other family members handled the import and customs process, worked
as shopkeepers, and as technicians doing repairs on any broken items when
shipments arrived in Ghana.
For these bOgas, the business of importing secondhand computers and
other electronics tended to be a more recent add-on to other ways of generating income. Some of these importers had first gone abroad as many as
ten or twenty years prior in pursuit of work, money, and education. The
circumstances of the trip were generally only sketchily outlined in interviews. In one instance, while visiting one shop my research assistant and
I were scolded by the importers mother for even raising the sensitive question of how her son had gotten his chance to migrate. The importer
himself was out of the country at the time. Scornfully she muttered in Twi,
what kind of question is that? A move abroad could take place through
Table 7.1
Computers Imported into Ghana by Country Shipped From (20042009)




United States
United Kingdom
South Korea













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nonofficial channels. At another shop, the young shopkeepers admitted

that a connection man, one who could falsify documents or pay off the
proper authorities, was likely involved in their uncles emigration. Marriage
to a foreigner was another circumstance that had generated a travel opportunity for some computer importers. For those who had migrated decades
prior and through unofficial pathways, the ability to go into the importexport business was an outcome of many years of working toward the
financial accumulations and legal status that enabled freedom of movement between home and host countries. Mobility itself, because of its
scarcity, became a lucrative resource that savvy Ghanaian businessmen and
businesswomen were able to leverage.
The exact source of the imported computers obtained by Ghanaian
importers was also difficult to get those working in these family businesses
to specify. This was, after all, what gave the business a competitive edge.
Some mentioned buying from middlemen at auction, others visited flea
markets, some collected machines one by one from individual sellers. One
said he sourced computers online from his home in Germany. It was possible to distinguish importers who had better business connections (and
possibly better technical knowledge) based on visual inspection of the
machines on display at their shops. The age, condition, brand, and homogeneity of the machines gave some indication. A stack of machines that
were the same model and with the same specifications were likely to be
the ones coming from institutions, were probably bought in bulk, and had
a known history and interchangeable parts making the inevitable repairs
easier to carry out (see figure 7.1). The less savvy traders had a more
random assortment of computers, some off brand and perhaps even with
key components removed. One importer named Kennedy who operated
out of a shop in La Paz had a stack of about thirty or forty mismatched
computers brought from the United Kingdom, all of which had the hard
drives removed before he purchased them. He admitted to lacking any
particular technical knowledge about computers and did not do repairs
in-house. Computers were not the primary good he sold or where he made
most of his money. He sold these as untested machines at a lower price
shifting the risk over to his buyers. Because Kennedy sold the machines
untested he had no way of knowing how many were irreparably broken
(unless buyers came back to inform him or complain) but such an unselective importing process seems likely to contribute more in the short term

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 169

Figure 7.1
Shop of a top local computer importer; some machines still bear the property tags
that reveal their sourcethe New York Public Library

to the electronic waste problem than the practices of more discriminating

shops was the one known as G.K. Asare Enterprises.14 The two shopkeepers
forth between Ghana and the United Kingdom. The signboard at the shop
identified them as Dealers in Electrical Appliences [sic]. It also visually
depicted taxonomically each of the appliances they sold, a common practice in Ghanaian signage and a way of handling the wide-ranging literacy
and language abilities of potential customers. From left to right the signboard showed a flat screen monitor, CPU unit, keyboard, speakers, and
computer mouse, laptop, iron, microwave, stereo system, television, and
DVD/VCD players. At the front of the shop a sturdy wooden table displayed CPU units stacked eight high and six across. They were a mixture


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of identical models and miscellaneous machines but generally ones I recognized as reputable brands: Compaq, Packard Bell, Fujitsu, and a few
lesser-known ones. Each machine has a sticker on the front with three
numbers written by hand: (1) the processor speed, (2) the amount of RAM,
and (3) the size of the hard drive (e.g., P4 1.60/RAM 512/HDD 40 GB). A
Pentium IV would be priced in the 170 to 250 cedi range (approximately
$120 to $178) with the higher price including a monitor and peripherals
as part of the package. These were the specifications that determined the
price of the machine.
technicians and salesmen. They noted that their uncle went overseas generally for two or three months at a time. He had traveled to the United
Kingdom for the first time about twenty years ago and began his import
business (after many years of living abroad) bringing used vehicle engines
into Ghana. Three years ago he turned to secondhand electronics because,
as Samuel noted, he thought they would move faster (and thus repay
the upfront investment quickly) unlike the engines, which could take
months to sell. This family business had evolved over the years into a chain
of shops. There were two other shops in addition to this one. Another one
in the neighborhood was selling stereo equipment, secondhand refrigerators, and other domestic goods. A third shop was located in the city of
Kumasi. The shopkeepers estimated that their uncle was filling and sending
two forty-foot shipping containers approximately every three months.
Samuel and Freeman did work beyond simply minding the shop. Their
uncle invested in his younger family members so that they could better
course at the local Wintech Professionals Training school (a tertiary school
offering vocational training) to become a computer hardware technician.
These skills he put directly to use in repairing and refurbishing the computers that were coming into the shop. Over time as the business developed, the uncle and his nephews had become more discriminating in their
selection of goods to import as they came to know better what was in
on what would be worthwhile to import. The shopkeepers admitted that

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 171

there were some early mistakes bringing in those types they cant sell or
when broken they cant repair and leading to a certain amount of excess
Samuel estimated that around 10 percent of the computers (meaning the
CPU units) could not be salvaged and ended up being passed on to the
scraps dealers, generally due to damage to the motherboard.15 This fairly
low number (to the extent that it can be trusted as accurate) was a result
of their selection process (my uncle is very good at selecting goods, said
to test, repair, and refurbish as many of the computers as they could. They
get working again, creating a clear incentive to salvage whatever could
possibly be salvaged. This shop sold only tested goods that were confirmed
to be working in contrast to the computers imported by Kennedy. This
meant that when a buyer came to pick out such a computer, the salesmen
would plug it in and boot it up for the buyer to verify its functioning, a
service that was offered in lieu of a warranty.
The work undertaken by traders in the final stages of attracting customers and making the sale involved negotiating within a particular local
consumer culture that, like any other, dealt in aspiration and the formulation of new wants and needs (Burke 1996). However, there were some
particular issues raised by the fact that these goods had already been used
by Western consumers. Although commodity purchases inevitably rest on
the customer imagining a future improved by the acquisition of a good
(Slater 1997), for these goods it had to do with imagining not just the
commoditys future but also its past. Beliefs about the source and history
of used electronics shaped perceptions of quality.16 There was also a terminology specific to the category of secondhand goods. Used goods that were
imported from abroad, including computers and electronics, were referred
to locally as home used. The word home17 referred to the machines home,
that is, its original consumer market. Some of the traders and consumers
I spoke with also suggested that home used meant the machines were collected from peoples homes. The term was meant to highlight that such
goods were held to US or European consumer standards and specifications.
The signification of home used was a positive one meant to indicate that
the computer was affordable and also a high quality and reliable good.


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This was the term traders often used when pitching their goods and bargaining with customers.
There was a tension between traders and consumers apparent in the
way these groups divergently characterized and imagined the history of
these secondhand commodities. In bargaining, given that the traders goal
was the highest possible price and the buyers goal was the lowest, the
description traders provided of these origins was necessarily treated with
some suspicion. Another commonly used term, aburokyire bola (meaning
literally garbage from abroad), was mentioned as a specific sort of insult one
might lob at a trader, for instance, when bargaining had broken down or
if a customer felt slighted in some way. It is worth noting that the outward
facing term in English is the one with positive connotations whereas the
insult is communicated via Twi. Consistent with Sarkodies lyrics about the
low status work bOgas do abroad, this term went along with a general
suspicion that secondhand goods being sold in Ghana were literally being
scavenged from European or American dumps by Ghanaian importers.
Generally, aburokyire bola referred specifically to the kinds of imported
goods that were especially outdated and wornfaded and torn clothing,
dirty-looking items, or items with missing pieces. These were the sort of
things that were well and extensively used as a financier of one import
business noted diplomatically. Importers took pains to correct the perception that they were acquiring goods through scavenging. Asking about
aburokyire bola often produced defensive reactions among traders. One
importer clarified that the items he imported he paid good money for. He
asserted, I dont call it bola [garbage] . . . if someone is selling it, you are
going to use the money to buy. So how can you use money to go and buy
bola? The reasons that such seemingly good-quality items had been disposed of also demanded some sort of explanation. A major market in
secondhand clothing in central Accra was humorously referred to as obruni
wawu, which translates to white man has died, casting the market as a
massive, year-round estate sale. A frequent concern raised by consumers
was about disease transmission, particularly with clothing items or bedding.
Joyce, for example, lamented the sale of used mattresses18 in Ghana and
noted, some of the white people get sick, they will sleep on it and when
the person dies, they will bring it here and some people can get infected
if there was a person [who] died with serious disease. . . . So although the
term home used was used to promote the possession of such imported com-

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 173

modities as a way of establishing an equivalence between Ghanaian and

Western consumers, by contrast aburokyire bola was employed to cast
doubts, suggesting instead that consumers of this class of goods are reduced
to the level of selling or using the (literal) garbage of more privileged
Electronic Waste Dumping and Further Dimensions of Marginality in
Having introduced the topic of garbage, the next step to consider in the
circulation of secondhand computers is the journey of the defunct and
broken computers after they exit the Internet cafs, homes, and offices of
Accra. In the process of examining this end stage in the life cycle of
machine circulation, another distinct youth population came to light, one
that challenged a more routine understanding of the nature of humanmachine interaction and highlighted broader forms of engaging the technology. This population was composed of the young men and occasionally
children working as scrap collectors, scrap processors, and scrap traders.
Computer units, computer monitors, and peripheral devices such as printers are increasingly a substantial part of what they trade in. Young men
visible presence in the streets of Accra (see figure 7.2). This is something
that was not common in 2004 when this research began.19 The interest in
computers among these scrap collectors and dealers was not, however, in
its capabilities as an intact and functioning machine. Rather they perceived
the computer as an aggregation of more or less valuable constituent elementscopper, aluminum, plastic, and other materials. The work of these
scrap dealers, their way of engaging with a computer, was radically alternate to the work undertaken at the machine interface by Internet caf
users. Their activities question the assumption that a technologys impact
on a population stems from whether and how users interact with the intact
and functioning machine.
Ibrahim worked as a scrap metal dealer in the La Paz area. Similar to
family were from the northern region of Ghana. Unlike his fellow scrap
collectors and traders, however, his family had \been settled in Accra for
a long time and his grandfather had established a family home there before


Chapter 7

Figure 7.2
Young Dagomba men hauling televisions, a computer monitor, and other metal
scraps in the La Paz area

Ghanaian independence in 1957. Ibrahim handled computers, monitors,

more. He described himself as the destroyer for the area elaborating, if
something comes to me I have to destroy it. I doesnt repair. I destroy
I should repair it, I cant. I can use five minutes to cut a car [laughs] and
destroyer. I always destroy. As his explanation indicates, Ibrahim defined
his role according to a certain kind of power he possessed over material
objects. Yet he joked in a self-deprecating way about the narrow specificity
of the force he exerted. He could dismantle and obliterate with skill and
efficiency but was totally incapable of reversing that process. He emphasized in a positive way the physicality of such work in relation to his tribe
and regional affiliation asserting, Those people who are working in scraps,

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 175

they are the strongest men in Ghana . . . nobody have strong more than
northerners in the whole Ghana. This work bore some similarities to other
mechanical and machine-centered work, such as truck driving and auto
repair, jobs that were disproportionately occupied by northerners and
Muslims in Ghana.
dealing, he found a job he was able to simply walk into without special
training, degrees, or contacts. His mother gave him a modest sum to serve
as his initial working capital, an amount of around $500 (5 million cedis
in old currency circa 2001). This she acquired from the sale of a cow. He
began straight away buying up metal scraps with this money to sell for a
profit. He had arrived nine years later at an accumulation of around $5,000
acquired as scraps he was able to repair by enrolling assistance from his
extensive social network of fitters (auto mechanics). Afterward he was able
to get both vehicles operating as taxis. This generated a daily income for
him that was enough to cover his basic needs. He was well connected with
the many fitters in the area because they frequently had metal scraps to
sell. Although he did not have the skills to do repairs himself, he certainly
knew who could.
of a computer per pound was the copper wires that connected circuit
the insulation. There was also a developing local market for the circuit
Ghanaian scrap dealers who collected and sold these circuit boards did not
actually know what was being done with these boards by the buyers but


Chapter 7

where they sold these scraps to the SteelWorks or Valco factories for recycling. Several scrap dealers said they believed the iron scraps were being
recycled into iron rods to be used as security screens installed over windows
and for other similar uses. The plastic shell and whatever miscellaneous
parts were left after these extractions were generally dumped as is or burned
to reduce volume. Computer monitors, specifically CRTs, generally had
only one component for which there was a local market. This was the yoke
that functioned in the CRT to direct the electrons that project an image
onto the screen. This yoke was composed of a large copper coil. The plastic
cases were generally burnt or dumped along with the glass screen. It was
only the valueless elements that ended their travels right there in the
nearest garbage pile, the rest went back into circulation, some to in-country
factories to be reincorporated into new commodities and some went
further afield re-entering global flows of raw materials.
The way Ibrahim tells his story, he depicts his entry into the scraps
business as a choice he made willingly and that offered him an avenue for
autonomy and self-advancement. Nonetheless the roles in this industry
were not homogenous and there was a clear hierarchy of jobs. Below him
there were the scrap collectors who had only their laboring bodies to
employno working capital, no facilities, and few tools. By 2010 the
wooden carts of these scrap metal collectors had become a common sight.
They were a constant obstruction to traffic in the already jammed roads,
were honked at indignantly by taxis as they moved at a pedestrian pace
through city streets. For these collectors, their work entailed scouring the
city (and beyond) for these valuable scraps and then physically, manually
hauling them to a scrap yard or collection point.
Much of what is contained in these carts eventually ended up in Agbogbloshie, a scrap yard and dump site situated along the Korle Lagoon in
central Accra. Agbogbloshie is a sprawling site, Accras major center for the
activity of processing, trading, and dumping metal scraps. Although the
territory belonged historically to the Ga people who retain ownership of
the land, the current inhabitants, by and large, were Dagomba. Conflict
among different Dagomba clans and in particular a long-standing chieftancy issue (known as the ya-na incident) carried over into the social relations within the settlement. In August 2009 violence flared up between

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 177

these two groups leading to a number of deaths but on more ordinary

working days a visit to Agbogbloshie was more mundanely accompanied
by the constant ringing of hammers thunking against metal and the acrid
smell of burning plastic. Ibrahims claim that the scrap metal industry
involved the strongest of men in Ghana was convincingly demonstrated
here. On one visit I saw several men leaning with every bit of muscle power
they could muster to push forward an entire intact metal car frame balanced precariously on one of the standard wooden carts. The narrow but
well-tread dirt trails threading through Agbogbloshie were traced and
retraced all day, not only by scrap metal collectors, dealers, and buyers,
but also by sellers offering food, water, air time cards for mobile phones,
and a whole assortment of non-necessities, the typically extraordinary
range of hawked goods. Just as the unfortunate circumstance of stalled
traffic throughout the city attracted masses of hawkers, the revaluation and
extraction of wealth from trash attracted similarly hardy microentrepreneurs. Along the main paved road that marks the boundary of Agbogbloshie there was a small mosque of cement block construction. A little
further in, municipal government funding had established a football field
that on one day hosted an informal game with teams who, lacking uniforms, played shirts and skins20 while several men on the sidelines did a
bit of betting on the outcome. Agbogbloshie supported a varied social
world with provisions not only for industry and exchange, but also for
religious practice and recreation.
Agbogbloshie could be subdivided into two areas, the scrap yard (as it
is called) and, on the outskirts, along the banks of the Korle Lagoon, the
bola (dump site). This area had been in flux for decades, settled only to be
periodically cleared by the authorities. Reports of a proposed clearing
exercise were once again appearing in local newspapers through 2009 and
2010. Agbogbloshie and the adjacent residential slum area provocatively
named Sodom and Gomorrah were to be pulled down and vacated as part
of the Korle Lagoon Restoration Project, though the threatened expulsion
seemed to be indefinitely on hold.
At the furthest edges of Agbogbloshie, not in the scrap yard but in the
bola, was where most of the apocalyptic images of sooty young men and
billowing smoke that began appearing in the Western media were captured. This reporting drew attention to the issue of electronic waste export
from the United States and Europe to developing countries. In the bola,


Chapter 7

the workers tended to be still younger than those in the scrap yard, teenagers rather than twenty-somethings. One fifteen-year-old I spoke with said
he had migrated from the north by himself without family to accompany
him or to receive him in Accra. The work these youth were doing was the
simple processing of small amounts of copper scraps using self-fashioned
tools to make money for their survival. They burnt the plastic insulation
off copper wires, using chunks of insulation extracted from old refrigerators
to focus and conserve the heat. The plastic insulation, for safety reasons,
is fire resistant, making it difficult to burn. Young women with plastic bags
of chilled water observed, sitting on overturned plastic computer monitor
cases reappropriated as impromptu stools. They sold the sealed plastic bags
of water they carried to these scraps processors who used them to suffocate
the fires (see figure 7.3).
The work taking place in Agbogbloshie brought forward a whole new
set of unanticipated risks stemming from this emerging computer trade
and from the Internet caf scene that was a source of demand for such

Figure 7.3
Extracting copper at the Agbogbloshie dump site in Accra

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 179

equipment. Local ways of processing through uncontained and open

burning releases toxic substances harmful to the environment and to
human health. The insulation around copper cables are typically made of
brominated plastics (used for its flame retardant properties) and they
release halogenated dioxins and furans on burning, substances that accumulate in the body once exposed and at high levels are known to be carcinogenic (Ladou and Lovegrove 2008). These chemicals are also known
to suppress the immune system, interfere with hormone levels, and reduce
reproductive capacity.21 The CRT computer monitors (along with the television sets that were dumped alongside at the site) were especially troubling, containing only the small copper yoke that was of any value in the
local market and large amounts of lead that was used to insulate against
the radiation emitted by the internal components. Lead exposure can lead
to damage to organs and to the central nervous system and reproductive
system. Children are known to be especially sensitive.22 Though the glass
in CRTs was junk and wasnt purposefully processed or recycled, in extracting the copper yoke and getting rid of the valueless remnants it was inevitably smashed and left lying where all the lead, which had previously been
suspended in the intact equipment, was free to seep into the soil or was
pushed into the lagoon where it became a water contaminant. Among the
scrap dealers, collectors, and processors in the bola and elsewhere I found
that there was little knowledge or concern about any health issues related
to material and chemical exposure.
These stories of the bOga traders, the shopkeepers and technicians such
as Samuel and Freeman, Ibrahim the successful scraps dealer, and the laboring scraps collectors and teenagers piecing together their survival from
extracting and selling copper cables are all linked together by this flow of
secondhand computers. Their diverging relationship to the computer also
makes visible further divisions of center and periphery within Ghanaian
society and helps to better situate the relative social circumstances of
Internet caf users in Ghana, the population that was the principle focus
of previous chapters. A generational divide between youth and their elders
and specifically the marginalization of the young by the old has been
considered already. This chapter adds to this mix those populations inhabiting the economically depressed northern regions of Ghana as well as the
general division between urban and rural populations. There is the marginalization, for example, most acutely felt by very recent migrants making


Chapter 7

their way within the urban center but without territorial claims, language
skills, or expansive social networks. The various zongo neighborhoods
in Accra, where large Muslim populations lived often characterized with
a broad brush by outsiders, actually varied substantially as far as the
duration and continuity of their existence. The neighborhoods of Nima
and Mamobi already existed at Ghanas independence. A number of the
young Internet users in Mamobi had been born and raised in Accra
and were not confined as narrowly by small language communities. They
spoke fluent Twi, the urban lingua franca, and often quite good English as
well. They benefited from an education in urban schools and other
resources whose quality tends to correlate with population centers. By
contrast, the scraps collectors at Agbogbloshie typically were first-generation migrants, many arriving in the city only a few months or a year prior.
The current Sodom and Gomorrah zongo adjacent to Agbogbloshie had
formed only since the early 1990s or so. Many residents were part of a
displaced population rather than voluntary migrants. Some number of
these residents had fled localized conflict in the upper eastern region of
Ghana. A marginalization related to the internal geography of the nationstate can be made concrete and visible to observers through the diverging
ways of relating to particular commodities such as computers and other
electronic goods.
Different social histories and political and economic resources may yield
dramatically different ways of engaging with a technology. Scrap dealing
was a particular mode of engaging an artifact (if not precisely a form of
use in a conventional sense) that involved dividing the machine into
homogenous elements, sorting out what was materially valuable toward
recommodification. The gain was monetary in converting junk into
something saleable. The work done on the machine through dismantling,
burning, and sorting was a manipulation meant to add (marginal) value.
Lacking the language abilities, literacy skills, money, and patience to
engage the technology through the functionality of the human-machine
interface, the scrap handlers brought an entirely different set of resources
(the laboring body, physical strength) to bear on the artifact. Accounting
for the scrap dealers in Agbogbloshie as another youth population shows
how Internet access and use also implicates a necessary ecosystem of distribution, repair, and disposal. The dramatically different forms of engagement by the scrap metal dealers on the one hand and the Internet caf

The Import of Secondhand Computers and the Dilemma of Electronic Waste 181

users on the other ultimately map out very different distributions between
the benefits and costs of engaging a technology.
The process of coming to terms with the, at times, harsh materiality of the
Internet could potentially reshape the terrain of Internet access in Ghana
in the future. Changing commodity flows and new regulations may follow
from emerging domestic and foreign political pressures. This chapter has
reconsidered the problem of electronic waste by looking holistically at the
distribution channel that transports secondhand computers to Ghana and
specifically the role played by Ghanaians in actively constructing this
channel. So far, the formulation of the e-waste problem in Ghana by journalists and activists has not accounted for the distinctions Ghanaians
truly waste. Furthermore, the role played by Ghanaians as traders and the
reasoning they attach to their involvement in this industry is largely
excluded from such a depiction. The full set of issues at stake in this import
process are much broader than this issue of waste handling alone. In addition to the way this particular commodity flow is harming the local environment and the health of those handling these machines, there are
converse benefits to technical skill development and the employment of
Ghanaian technicians who repair and refurbish nonworking machines
locally and the technology access and utility that reused machines are
providing to the general population in Internet cafs as well as in homes
and offices.
From discussion with the computer importers themselves, the amount
of true waste generated from a shipped container of secondhand or home
used electronics seemed likely to vary substantially according to the different ways Ghanaian importers organized their businesses. This included
their particular business skills as well as technical knowledge about the
goods they were importing. Some importers were more discriminating
and selective and better connected with supplies of quality secondhand
machines than others. In terms of solutions, the emphasis of activist
groups has been largely on the need to better regulate and enforce restrictions on the export of such used electronics from Western countries.23 The
need to set up proper waste-handling facilities in these e-waste destination


Chapter 7

countries has received much less emphasis by such groups. The center of
gravity of this debate, in this way, remains situated in the United States
and Europe. Yet the electronic waste issue is not a problem limited to secondhand machines but encompasses new equipment as well. All machines,
after some period of time, will eventually become a waste-management
issue so the in-country issue, as long as there is demand for and use of
computers in Ghana, remains unresolved.
This chapter and the last bookend the six-year period during which the
fieldwork for this book was undertaken (beginning with nine months in
20042005 and most recently seven weeks in 2010). They manage to
capture the waxing and waning of interest and enthusiasm for the latest
development solutionICTs and specifically computers and the Internet.
At what was possibly its climax following shortly after the dot-com boom,
the global WSIS conference promoted the UN version of a utopian information society. The alarm over electronic waste is evidence that critical
reconsideration is now well underway. The Frontline documentary on
Ghanas e-waste problem makes a connection between this sense of promise
followed by disillusionment noting, when containers of old computers
first began arriving in West Africa a few years ago, Ghanaians welcomed
what they thought were donations to help bridge the digital divide adding
that this yielded only junk and new avenues for facilitating a criminal


Reviewing the history of development solutions, such a

cycle appears all but inevitable. Indias green revolution brought modern
agricultural practices to boost crop yields but was met later with alarm over
environmental degradation, overconsumption of certain farming inputs
(water in particular) that led to social conflict, and the vulnerability of
farmers to global markets and spiraling debt (Gupta 2000; Jasanoff 2002;
Shiva 1991). The microfinance movement has recently been similarly
reconsidered with concern over new bank lenders taking advantage of the
poor.25 Furthermore, academic work on borrower households found evidence of how loan programs sparked family conflicts (Rahman 1999).
However, in the case of information and the Internet as a development
solution, this cycle uniquely centered on renegotiating the materiality of
what were previously presented as immaterial digital flows. The promise
of a cost-free information revolution in this narrative arc came to be transformed instead into a literal river of waste.