During the past days, a number of different news and blog posts led me to think hard about e-waste, how it is generated, treated and dumped around the world, and how this relates not only to environmental issues, but algo to the global economy. First, it was this post at Subsaharska, in which Miquel argued that e-waste "is a big problem and it's only going to get bigger. It's one of the things that makes me truly cringe about the information age in that the leftover components are all getting dumped in countries such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. People have few ways to fight back other than to deal with what is dumped upon their shores. And when they do fight back, suddenly, they're called pirates...For anyone who thinks that they need the latest iPod/iPhone, or laptop marvel, they should come and stay for awhile in rural areas in Africa where the trash is burned daily and you're breathing in an ungodly amount of things you'd rather not know about (mainly damnable petrochemicals.) For me, in a few months, I won't breath this anymore, but for the people here, it's constantly in the air and it's only growing more. Think the next time you buy an electronics item, stop and think if you really and truly need it."
Not only e-waste, but numerous other types of waste (often of the most dangerous ones - such as nuclear waste, toxic substances, deathly chemicals...) end up being dumped on the poorest areas of the globe. In some cases, this is done with the encouragement of the country's government, who expects to benefit from their "comparative advantage" in the global economy by providing the services at a very low cost - needsless to say the real costs being born by the workers on these areas, who work in awful conditions and without the necessary safety requirements. One of the industries where this is most visible (and horribly spectacular) is the ship-breaking on Indian and Bangldeshi beaches (See this blog entry and this El Pais article (Spanish) .
Photo from the El Pais article
In other cases, toxical waste is disposed in more shady deals, sometimes completely illegally ones. For example, the N'drangheta (Calabrian version of the Sicilian mafia) has recently been found to have made a big business by getting rid of nuclear way in "un-ortodox" ways, such as sinking boats on the Mediterranean sea, or shipping the waste to Somalia, where it was buried after bribing local politicians. Also it was recently revealed that, the British company Trafigura, was found guilty of dumping "400 tonnes of toxic waste from the cargo vessel Probo Koala...at the West African port of Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast. The waste was loaded on to trucks and dumped around the city.Over the following weeks, thousands of residents found themselves choking and coughing, some vomiting. At least 10 are said to have died and many still bare the scars". Trafigura finally agreed to a $45m (£30m) payout as compensation, which those affected began receiving earlier this month. I blogged about this at the time (here, in Spanish), and you can read the full story here.
Growing amounts of e-waste are fast becoming ones of the most pressing and dangerous type of waste; often this is just dumped on the landfills of the poores countries. For example, see this series of photographs by Andrew McConnell on the Agbogbloshie suburb in Ghana's capital, Accra, which has become a dumping ground for hundreds of tons of e-waste from Europe and the US (via Subsaharska too). As McConnel notes, this waste often enters these countries thanks to unscrupulous trades who label the goods as second-hand goods, or charity donations. This opens another aspect of the debate: the import of used and second-hand goods into African countries. Recently, it was reported that Uganda was "reconsidering its ban on the importation of used electronics following complaints from traders and other stakeholders over the indiscriminate nature of the policy...(Prefering instead) a more targeted approach to the implementation of the ban to focus on technology that is harmful to the environment instead of uniform application to all secondhand goods". This was a similar story as the one coming from Pakistan, a country where e-waste is a serious threas, and whose country is considering a ban on the import of used computers. You can read here a nice article debating how, as well as disadvantages, importing second-hand computers can make these more affordable and therefore available to more people. My opinion here is that prevention is better than cure, and if importing used computers is going to becoming a back-door for dumping of e-waste, then a ban should be adopted.
Photo Andrew McConnell
Furthermore, as this BBC "Have Your Say" debate suggests, there are indeed arguments for banning not only electronics but also other type of second-hand and charity goods (such as clothes) which harm local production. Again, here I support the protection of local industries, and a ban od second-hand cloths will be a positive development - although unfortunately here not sufficient for saving local textile industries, whose biggest competitor is cheap Chinese products (and as you can imagine, African countries would not risk losing Chinese investments and support by rising their import duties on Chinese goods...). I think perhaps the answer for textile producers and designers in Africa is to turn their already beautiful, good quality pieces into fashionable products which can can be sold (and priced) as luxury items - something for which they need only a good branding and marketing campaign...
An example of luxury goods made using the appeal of African textiles, done however by an Italian company, Moroso (More at Nosideup)
I think both e-waste and the textile industry's precarious situation are simply different faces of the key debate - the global economy and Africa's integration into it. The general debate on import bans and on the textile industry, is part of a larger and a well-known outcome of the development and globalisation debates (dating back at least to the 1960s and some African countries' attempts at import substitution industrialization (ISI)) E-waste is perhaps, a more clear product of globalisation, and how Africa is integrated into the global economy at present. Globalisation has facilitated the flow of information, goods and capital (much more than people, who remain still tied to their countries, especially if you come for a poor country), resulting often in positive outcomes. Most often however, the results have been largely negative - not only growing disparity between rich and poor, but also the appearance of gray zones. On the words of the anthropologist Carolyn R. Norstrom, the global economy has meant increasing flows, but also increasing "fractures". These fractures can be physical spaces - such as war-zones and "failed states" like Somalia - but also all kinds of activities, from clearly illegal ones - terrorism, kidnappings and drug trading - to the gray activities of multinational corporations - pharmaceuticals, arms and oil producers of course, but also companies responsible for what Nordstrom labels "blood-tomatoes" (grown in war zones), the mobile phone industry's thirst for coltan (which as Mike in Mo'dernity, Mo'problem notes, cannot be stopped by consumer-power), and many others.
And it is not only in producing goods that the "fractures" of the global economy become relevant, but also - as e-waste shows - in the disposal of it. On this there is, as Miquel says, a certain degree to which individuals can contribute, by not going for the latest technology craze without thinking the implications through. Ultimately however, the inmoral and illegal disposal of dangerous waste is result of the "fractures" on the global economy, much like the competition faced by the African textile industry is a result of its "flows". In order for these problems - symptoms - to be solved, their root cause - the uneven global economy - must be addressed; if not, all we'll do, will be mere gap-filling.
- BarCamp Abidjan has just begun!! And it will be on, until Sunday. You can follow live updates on Twitter from @africamps, or through the tag #bcbabi. Looking forward to all the sessions and talks!!
- Regarding African politics this week, well, no one can doubt the man's entertainment value. This week Zuma visited the UK, where he accused the British media of seeing Africans as "barbaric". Not only Zuma's personal life, but also his attitude, declarations, and the state of South African politics led to plenty of comments on the media - from the ridiculous (the Daily Mail column that rightly ofended Zuma), to this article by Mark Gevisser and even today's editorial on The Guardian (partly siding with Zuma in criticising the media's "undertone of imperial snobbishness" and a "British national weakness for thinking of foreign leaders in the most simplistic, comic-book terms".
- Togolese elections yesterday, apperaed to have gone smoothly. For all the information tune to the African Elections Togo site - here
- After China and India, attention now turns to new "emergent" powers in Africa - Iran (and Israel). See this article on the Economist and this one by the Deutsche-Welle.
- This week's issue of Pambazuka News carries plenty of interesting articles, on various topics such as Zimbabwe's unity government's staggering from pillar to post, (incidentally, we have also recently learnt that external support for the regime is in decline, after China affirmed it does not consider Zimbabwe a "friend"); US interference in Nigeria's constitutional crisis; how Abahlali baseMjondolo is gathering strengthafter the Kennedy Road evictions and a Campaign for democracy in Swaziland.
- Global Voices carries this week two interesting articles on the topic - first is a mention to this very interesting article on Afromusing from early February (which I read at the time but forgot to share), and also this piece by Rebekah Heacock on whether "Is ICT all it's cracked up to be?". She discusses how, in Sudan for example, some ICT4D (ICT for development) initiatives that are all the hype at the moment, have failed to produce results. A test to see how far citizen involvement on politics can go, she argues, will be the forthcoming Sudanese elections. And just to prove the point of ICT4D being fashionable, the World bank has launched "a new online game, Evoke, to channel gamer obsession and time (3 billion hours per week) into solving Africa's problems" (via Bombastic Element)
- Away from politics, A Bombastic Element has an entry on the latest news and initiatives around Bushpunk (definition here), and on the recently concluded Design Indaba.
- And Africa Is A Country shares his enthusiasm for the forthcoming Pop Africana Magazine.
Click on the picture to see the magazine's site
Even though African politics, like politics everywhere else, sometimes bring a number of surprises, it is often the case that political affairs tend to be rather predictable. For example, in certain countries the outcome of elections is known well before they take place, as a result of the ruling party's dominant position in politics and society and its nearly total control of the media and public institutions. Generally however, people interested in following, analysing, (even trying to predict) African politics needs to deal with different situations and different degrees of uncertainty which follow from varying levels of information. The problem of “imperfect information” – to borrow a term from the game theory and political science jargon – is particularly accurate in undemocratic regimes, given that these are often the least transparent. Recent news coming from different African countries – all of which, curiously, are examples of national unity governments – can help us see how these different levels of uncertainty play out. And also how this uncertainty and lack of information, relates not only to the more or less democratic character of the regime, but also to how far citizen-driven media and ITCs have mad inroads into the public opinion landscapes of these countries.
The varying levels of information and uncertainty that can be distinguished in any given situation were brilliantly defined by the otherwise unsympathetic (to put it mildly) of the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, back in 2002. In his now famous words:"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know."
In a few African countries, for a number of reasons, including: a more visible traditional media - TV, radio and, especially, newspapers (as this entry on A Bombastic Element notes) - more developed world of ITCs (with a brand new iHub), various blogs and citizen journalism initiatives, stronger connections to the international media and public opinion, etc – people can have access to a greater level of information, which in turn allows them to have a fairly accurate idea of what the situation is, and what is to be expected. The position of the Kenyan unity government is one such example and, as I have blogged before here (in Spanish though), it is widely known that the accountability of the government and the political class, falls well short of what it is expected, and that in-fighting within the government often hampers political decisions.
Thus, the news last weekend that Prime Minister Raila Odinga's decision to remove the Ministers of agriculture and education from their posts as a result of a fraud investigation, had been revoked by President Mwai Kibaki, was another example – even if this time a more serious one – of a known situation. Below you can see the NTV report on this decision.
A second degree of uncertainty relates to those situations where there is a general awareness of the situation, but the lack on information is important. This has been the case, for example, in the recent events in Cote d'Ivoire, where Friday’s announcement that President Gbagbo was dissolving the national unity government as well as the Electoral Commission to be named, came as a surprise. But only a relative one, given that the elections, planned for next month, had been repeatedly delayed since 2005, and that this time round, doubts had been cast on the electoral roll, after it was found that the electoral commission had fraudulently added nearly 500.000 names to the voting list. All these situation was only briefly covered by the traditional media, and citizen journalism and new media, only partly could cover for this absence, as Miquel brilliantly writes over at Subsaharska. This situation continued during this week, with some blogs and Twitter users – such as @hudin, @eliaws, @ourmaininafrica, @cartunelo, @tndzulo – commenting on the protests which occurred on Monday and yesterday, after there was a delay in naming a new government.
President Gbagbo makes his announcement - Foto Subsaharska
Finally, Cote d'Ivoire's neighbour, Guinea-Conakry, could be cited as an example of numerous unknown unknowns. Even though I am no specialist on Guinean politics, I get the feeling that, ever since the horrific events of September 28th last year (see the Human Rights Watch report here), the international opinion has been constantly surprised by the different news coming out from this country, not all of them bad. These include, in chronological order (and also from worse to better), the shooting of Dadis Camara in December and his swift exit from the country, the decision of the military to name not only a civilian leader, but an opposition leader, Jean-Marie Doré to lead the transition, and the recent unveiling of an interim government, made up of over 30 members both military and civilian, together with the compromise that elections will be held within six months. The unexpected nature of all these events – unknown unknowns – is mostly explained by the scarce information coming out the country – a good example of information however, is the journalist portal Konakry Express - as well as the rather obscure character of the Guinean regime.
Thus, the degree of "unknownledge", this is uncertainty, of any situation in (African) politics, is given by the information available. If we want to be able to understand these different situations then we must encourage the production of more and more reliable information, not only from traditional sources, but also from new media and citizen journalism. Initiatives that, although growing within African countries, are doing it unevenly and often facing serious difficulties, something that results in varying levels of information and certainty.
There is no doubt that during the more than 150 years that it has existed,photography has changed the way we relate to the world around us. In a way, in the words of Susan Sontag, has altered the notion "of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe" (On Photography, 1971, p.3). Regarding the African continent, photography has also played a role. The "construction" of the African continent during the nineteenth and twentieth century by racist and colonial discourses has been based not only on words, spoken or written, but also and perhaps more powerfully, on images. Sontag notes "there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate, by seeing them as they never see themselves... ; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed" (On Photography, 1971, p .14). The profound relationship between the construction of an European imaginary of colonised Africa and photography has been explored numerous times. One of the most interesting examples may be the book " Images and empires: visuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa ", edited by Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin. In the Spanish context, this kind of colonial imagery is vividly portrayed in the book of Pere Ortín and Vic Pereira "Mbini: Hunters of images in colonial Guinea .
But while the Europeans used the "colonising camera" to create an image of Africa that corresponded to his racist discourse that justified colonial occupation, the camera was used during all this time for Africans to create their own discourses. Already during the nineteenth century African individuals and families posed in studio photography sessions that became a way to portray and create an alternative image to that suggested by Europeans. During the twentieth century, with cheaper and more easily available cameras, this construction of an alternative discourse began to democratise, being accessible to more people. With the advent of independence, many photographers became true chroniclers of the optimism and hope of these countries. Some of these chroniclers would become two of the best known African photographers: Malick Sidibé and Seidou Keita , both from Mali.
Merengue dancer, 1964, © Malick Sidibé. Photo courtesy Fifty One Fine Art Photography
Via LensCulture
Girls on Bike © Seydou Keita (via BBC Photography )
Today, fifty years after the independence of most of African countries, there are many photographers on the continent, each with different interests, languages and styles. Many blogs often comment on the work of these artists and journalists that convey different images of the continent. For example, Twiga recently pointed out a number of South African photographer (including the photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko, whose exhibition "Welcome to Paradise" can be seen in Casa África in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria until 19 February).
Other blogs like Africa is a Country , and A Bombastic Element , periodically make entries on the photography and photographers of the continent such as the Ghanaian Nana Kofi Acqua , or the South African Steve Bloom .
Despite these variety of images and photographers, the representation of the continent continues to be often manipulated by different discourses: in this case the images of primitive peoples used to justify colonial occupation have given way to images of poverty, wars, famines and disasters that support an image of Africa as a place with no present and no future. To counter this, various initiatives have emerged that seek to offer another image of the continent. An example of this is Joan Bardeletti's project "Middle Classes in Africa" (via Africa is a Country ), which seeks to portray the African middle classes, and has started in Kenya and Ivory Coast. The choice of this population group is due both to the fact that it is growing rapidly, as to the fact that it has traditionally been seen as a symbol of Western development absent on the continent.
Kady Camara in his internet cafe and photocopying in Abidjan (Photo Middle Classes in Africa )
Another such project is "Africa Knows" , a Kenyan initiative that seeks to tell another story about Africa, through photojournalism and creative writing and using social networks and new technologies. In addition, photos of AfricaKnows can be bought online in various formats to support the project.
Been Together for Too Long (Photo: Joshua Wanyama)
