Workshop proposal: A practical introduction to computer recycling strategies from Westafrican e-waste dumps

This workshop will be offering the participants both a theoretical and practical introduction to computer recycling strategies in Westafrican countries. The suburb area of Agbogbloshie in Ghana’s capital Accra has become the world biggest electronic waste dumping ground. In Western countries old computers have to be disposed in an environmentally responsible manner which can become a costly affair. Through donating this obsolete computers to third world countries like Ghana, Nigeria or Ivory Coast people get rid of their e-waste problem and at the same time maybe even help the poor. In the theoretical introduction we want to show the current situation (summer 2014) at the Agbogbloshie dump. In the practical part participants can take apart second hand computers and we will detect and discuss how to reuse different parts. In this process we draw special attention to salvaged hard drives from Agbogbloshie and use open source software to recover data and get a clearer picture of the unknown computers’ pre-owner. The process of recovering and analyzing the hard drives will be documented in an online blog.

Read more