The Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda is home to some 270,000 refugees, largely from South Sudan. It’s now the site of a new program to safely remove e-waste from solar lanterns and their batteries, in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says will also provide training and jobs to…
One of the first things to notice in the new “Children and Digital Dumpsites” report from the World Health Organization is how little e-waste – castoff phones, computers and other electronics – originates in African nations. It may be the most important thing to notice, though, because the enormous amounts…
A Colombian company is partnering with the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, to convert recycled plastics from Côte d’Ivoire into modular bricks that will be used to build school classrooms in the West African nation. “This factory will be at the cutting edge of smart, scalable solutions for some of…
The roughly 1.2 billion people who live on the African continent contribute the least to the world’s e-waste problem, but in countries like Liberia and Ghana they deal with the trash left behind from the world’s digital and technological advances. All told, an estimated 48.5 million tons of e-waste was…
The value of copper and other recoverable materials in the e-waste generated around the world in 2016 was an estimated USD$55 billion, according to the new Global E-Waste Monitor 2017 report. That’s more than the GDP of most countries in the world, the authors said. Yet most of the 44.7 million…
A report released Sunday on e-waste in Asian countries found a 63 percent increase in the amount of electronic waste generated when compared with five years ago – and it serves as a reminder of how African nations struggle with their own e-waste challenges and creative solutions too. The E-Waste…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times