Nigeria has become a dumping ground for electronic waste (e-waste) from developed countries due to its booming market for fairly-used electrical and electronic equipment. The country’s inadequate waste management infrastructure has exacerbated this crisis; hence, the informal sector handles the majority of e-waste disposal, collection, and recycling. This often involves crude and hazardous methods, which pose severe risks to both human health and the environment.
TheCable’s JEMILAT NASIRU AND IBRAHIM MANSUR
You could perceive it just as you could see it from a distance — the huge monument of a people’s consumption habits. Upon closer inspection, what appears to be a three-storey mansion is a landfill overflowing with rotten newspapers, clothes, liquor bottles, and everything else dumped there the previous day — and that exactly is the problem. Unsorted.
A section of the Olusosun dumpsite in Lagos
NIGERIA’S E-WASTE ECONOMY
[/caption] 133 million multidimensionally poor people
One of the entrance of Computer Village, hub of West Africa’s ICT market [/caption]
E-WASTE POISONING: THOUSANDS OF NIGERIANS ‘LIVING ON BORROWED TIME’
An e-waste recycler undergoing lung test in Lagos [/caption]
ten chemicals of public health concern.
employing over 100,000 people particularly susceptible to adverse health outcomes
Soja: One of the challenges of this job is frequent harassment from security officials in the state. They arrest our boys despite providing means of identification and reflective jackets.
An aerial shot of the scrap yard in Ojota, Lagos
Kabiru works at the scrap yard in Ojota, He makes N10,000-N15,000 a day
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BUSINESS IS THE SAME IN KANO
POOR REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT FUELLING INFORMAL E-WASTE RECYCLING
National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA)
Basel and Bamako Conventions. TRT World
The EE Sector Regulations Act 2022
DESPITE RISKS, E-WASTE RECYCLING IS A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS
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AUTHORITIES AND STAKEHOLDERS REACT
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. The story first appeared on TheCable