Agbogbloshie

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Agbogbloshie
Town
Agbogbloshie Location of Agbogbloshie, Ghana in Greater Accra Region
Coordinates: 05°32′42.0″N 00°13′30″W / 5.545000°N 0.22500°W / 5.545000; -0.22500
Country	Ghana
Region	Greater Accra Region
District	Korle-Klottey Municipal District
Time zone	UTC0 (GMT)

Agbogbloshie was the nickname of a commercial district on the Korle Lagoon of the Odaw River, near the center of Accra, Ghana's capital city in the Greater Accra region, before it was demolished by the Ghanian government in 2021.^[1] Near the slum called "Old Fadama", the Agbogbloshie site became known as a destination for externally generated automobile and electronic scrap collected from mostly the western world. It was a center of a legal and illegal exportation network for the environmental dumping of electronic waste (e-waste) from industrialized nations. The Basel Action Network, a charitable non-governmental organization based in Seattle, has referred to Agbogbloshie as a "digital dumping ground", where millions of tons of e-waste were processed each year.^[2]

The most exhaustive study of the trade in used electronics in Nigeria, funded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Basel Convention, revealed that, out of 540,000 tonnes of informally processed waste electronics, 52% of the material was recovered.^[3]

According to statistics from the World Bank, in large cities like Accra and Lagos the majority of households have owned televisions and computers for decades.^[4] The 2012 UN Report "Where are WEEE in Africa" (WEEE meaning Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) disclosed that the majority of used electronic equipment in African dumps had not been recently imported as scrap, but had originated from those African cities.^[5]

Agbogbloshie is situated on the banks of the Korle Lagoon, northwest of Accra's Central Business District.^[6][7] Roughly 40,000 Ghanaians inhabited the area, most of whom were migrants from rural areas.^[8][6] Due to its harsh living conditions and rampant crime, the area was nicknamed "Sodom and Gomorrah".^[9]

The Basel Convention prevents the transfrontier shipment of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries. However, under Annex Ix, B1110, the Convention specifically allows export for reuse and repair. While numerous international press reports have made reference to allegations that the majority of exports to Ghana are dumped, research by the US International Trade Commission found little evidence of unprocessed e-waste being shipped to Africa from the United States.^[10]

Whether domestically generated by residents of Ghana or imported, concern remained over the methods of waste processing — especially burning — which release toxic chemicals into the air, land and water. Exposure is especially hazardous to children, because those toxins are known to inhibit the development of the reproductive system, the nervous system and, especially, the brain. Concerns about human health and the environment of Agbogbloshie continue to be raised because the area remains heavily polluted.^[6][11][12]

In the 2000s, the Ghanaian government, with new funding and loans, implemented the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP), an environmental remediation and restoration project that was designed to deal with the pollution problem by dredging the lagoon and Odaw canal to improve drainage and the outfall into the ocean.^[13]