62 million tons. This is the volume of electrical and electronic waste – or “e-waste” – generated worldwide in 2022, according to the latest UN Global E-Waste Monitor Report. The number of smartphones, connected watches, flat screens, computers and tablets being thrown away continues to rise, and is up 82% since 2010.

E-waste is one of the world’s biggest sources of waste. It is also the most valuable, containing precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum group metals. In 2022, however, only 22.3 % of it was officially documented as being collected and recycled.

Having long gone to Asia, e-waste from Europe and the US is arriving in huge quantities in West Africa ports, in violation of international treaties. Ghana has seen the proliferation of informal open-air landfill sites that have come even closer to people’s homes after the dismantling of the massive Agbogbloshie scrapyard site in July 2021.

It was against this backdrop that – supported by Fondation Carmignac – investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and photojournalists Muntaka Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen embarked on a project combining photography, video, audio recordings, and writing. Departing from the dramatic imagery often used by the media to portray Ghana as “the dustbin of the world”, they spent a year documenting the incredibly complex ecosystem that provides both a crucial economic opportunity for thousands of people in Ghana and has a considerable negative human and environmental impact.

Delving into the complex world of second-hand electronics in Ghana and Europe, Kurzen documented the e-waste flows and the communities that activate them, challenging negative stereotypes of exporters, and highlighting the inefficiency of European e-waste bureaucracy. At the other end of the chain, in Accra, researcher and documentary photographer Chasant immersed himself in a sociological analysis of the economy on which many communities depend. He analysed the social groups of e-waste workers, revealing a hierarchical organisation and the mechanisms of migration from north-east Ghana. With his team, Anas infiltrated the ports of Accra to reveal the legal and illegal flows of e-waste. Working undercover, and using trackers implanted in illegal waste, he unmasked the strategies and corruption that enable people to circumvent the law, both in Europe and in Ghana.

Below are some of the images from Kurzen and Chasant with comments from them on their processes.

Bénédicte Kurzen

“My research started in Accra, where I contacted the Second Hand Dealers Association to understand the market and needs. The majority of the end-of-life waste coming into Ghana is composed of second-hand items collected by the Ghanaian diaspora and shipped by Ghanaian agents and Ghanaian exporters. Through the Association, I managed to meet some importers, mostly Ghanaians who were based in Europe.

I was trying to understand where those importers are getting their goods from. So I followed them into a second-hand market, some hidden weird retailer places in the middle of the English countryside, which refused to be pictured. There are so many different ways people are getting those goods! They are using social media more and more, and the digital economy has vastly facilitated their trade.

The final step was to understand the role of the institutions. There are a lot of laws structuring this economy, but they don’t seem to be enforced, and this is why so many things are leaving for West Africa. All those countries, Ghana included, signed the Basel Convention, but they don’t enforce it. I thought that instead of pointing the finger at the exporters, the smugglers, the traffickers, it was interesting to point it at the European institutions, which are actually not reaching their own targets. For instance, Holland has a target of 65% of electronic waste collection. We are talking about items that are still repairable, and this is the loophole that needs to be addressed.

Not everything is end-of-life and the majority of things don’t go straight to Agbogbloshie. People need those electrical and electronic appliances and before they end up in the dump site, they actually have a second life in the households of Ghanaian people. It is not a simple thing where the people who are exporting goods are only criminals. They are also exporting things that are completely legal. A lot of it is motivated by economic opportunities, just to make a living.”

The Netherlands, Rotterdam, June 2023. Rotterdam was by far the EU port with the largest activity in the fourth quarter of 2022, with 111 million tonnes of gross weight of goods handled. Rotterdam was the main EU port for all types of cargo, except Ro-Ro mobile units. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR

Rainham, UK, April 2023. Sam Osei’s yard is known as “Little Africa” for its diversity of clients. Sam Osei started this business from his son’s bedroom. The yard serves as a storage area, a shipping agency, a haulage service, a loading service, and a container delivery service to the port. It is also an informal market place, where people bring their collected electronics. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR

Ghana, Accra, Zongo Lane, Spring 2023. Zongo Lane is like an Alibaba cavern. Hundreds of small shops for all types of electronics components, modules, and general parts populate the narrow streets of this old Accra neighbourhood. Repairers and often parts sellers. Broken electronics get dismantled and reused. Ghanaians, but also Nigerians work here. It also used to be the marketplace for Used and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (UEEE) coming from Europe but the narrow streets were not allowing all the containers to park and offload without creating a complicated traffic situation. While in Europe the independent repairers have almost disappeared, an entire economic ecosystem survives on this craft. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR.

E-waste in Ghana, Accra, Zongo Lane, Spring 2023. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR.

Muntaka Chasant

Accra, Ghana, February 8, 2023. Horses forage in a section of the now-demolished Agbogbloshie scrapyard site. Old Fadama and Agbogbloshie, separated by the Korle Lagoon, were thriving wetlands decades ago. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac

Old Fadama in Accra, Ghana, February 9, 2023. Working through the night, Latif Fuseini, a repairman, attempts to repair and reanimate end-of-life electric motors (from air conditioners, washing machines, etc.). Using fan blades from these devices, he redesigns the electric motors into ceiling fans, which are used widely in Old Fadama and Northern Ghana. He relies on the end-of-life waste stream as a source of parts. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac

Old Fadama, Accra, Ghana, February 9, 2023. Simon Aniah, 24, burns scrap electrical cables to recover copper by the Korle Lagoon. From Vea, northeastern Ghana, Simon and hundreds of other young people migrate from his village and other areas in the Upper East to Accra to engage in e-waste work as a means to achieve upward social mobility. Upper East, the region Simon comes from, has the highest unemployment rate among the population 15-24 years in Ghana (2021 Ghana Census). © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac

In the left picture, Isaaka, 18, recovers iron materials from waste CRT TVs in a dumping area by the Korle Lagoon. In the middle picture, Simon Aniah, 24, burns scrap electrical cables to recover copper by the Korle Lagoon. In the right picture, Awimbela, working through the night, sifts through the soil to retrieve small pieces of copper and iron left over from the burning of waste electrical cables. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac.

The project will be the focus of exhibitions in 2024 in Paris (16 May-16 June), Arles (1 July-29 September), and New York (27 June-31 August). The exhibitions will be accompanied by a bilingual French-English catalogue co-published by the Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Editions.