Nigeria Becomes the Dumping Site of World’s E-Waste

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The 44th Annual International Conference of Chemical Society of Nigeria held in Lagos last week warned that Nigeria has become the international dumpsite for world’s electronic waste. The conference highlighted the health hazards posed by accumulated e-waste in the country.

According to Moses Chendo, President, Chemical Society of Nigeria, the last two decades have recorded exponential growth in electronic equipment production and consumption. The rapid changes in features and capabilities, drop in prices of equipment and penetration of Internet to more areas has led to increased sales in developed countries, which in turn has resulted in surge in volume of obsolete electronic and electrical devices.

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The transboundary movement of secondhand electronic devices to developing countries has been witnessing notable surge over the past several years. As per estimates, nearly one-fourth of used electrical and electronic equipment imported into Nigeria are found to be ‘dead’ on arrival.

Nearly 100,000 people work in informal sector e-waste recycling in the country. They employ manual primitive techniques to break down the devices to recover valuable metals out of them. This exposes them to direct chemical poisoning, thus leading to serious health hazards. The impacts go beyond the people working with the devices, the conference said.