The Conundrum: Transforming African E-waste Landfills to Urban Mines

Abstract

The amount of discarded electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), popularly known as e-waste, is rising alarmingly and drawing immediate attention from stakeholders. Governments in emerging economies support importing second-hand EEE to bridge the digital divide and allow communities to access the information superhighway. E-waste contains toxic elements deleterious to the environment and human health. Simultaneously, e-waste contains rare earth minerals that generate USD65 billion in revenue annually through recycling. Urban mining is reclaiming minerals from anthropogenic materials, reducing the extraction of virgin minerals facing depletion and with some sourced from unstable regions and conflict zones. The unidirectional flow of e-waste into Africa from the developed world is viewed as the re-colonisation and the carbonisation divide. Due to a lack of appropriate infrastructure and policies and low knowledge levels in developing countries, the management of e-waste is left to the informal sector, which uses rudimentary tools to extract rare earth metals. This chapter highlights the contentious definition of e-waste, its movement from the Global North, and its epidemiological and environmental impact. It advocates for setting policies and infrastructure to turn landfills and dumpsites into urban mines. This chapter also recommends that developing countries monitor the state of EEE imports and transform informal to formal recycling supported by coordinated collection and storage centres.