The Plural Lives of E-Waste: Valuation and Contestation in Accra's Recycling Network(s)

Abstract

Electronic waste (e-waste) has become a key lens for geographers interested in uneven urban development, environmental risk and global production networks, yet we still know comparatively little about how its value is made and contested in specific African urban spaces. I argue that e-waste in Accra, Ghana, is plural and ontologically multiple: the same devices are variously enacted as livelihood, commodity, hazard, governance object and political actor as they move through recycling networks. I develop a mechanism-centred explanation for this plurality and for the incomplete enrolment of formalisation by specifying four socio-material mechanisms: copper's market tempo, device repairability, tool throughput–cost fit and the atmospheric mobilisation of fumes and smoke. The analysis draws on a multi-sited, follow-the-thing approach and 60 semi-structured interviews across Accra's dispersed e-waste hubs. The findings show how informal workers perform e-waste as a resource for daily survival; repairers and second-hand sellers extend device lifespans and make electronics affordable; NGOs and civil-society organisations frame e-waste as a governance problem; and the materiality of e-waste itself shapes policy and practice. I trace these socio-material mechanisms to explain why formalisation and safer technologies often generate only partial and contested change. This study contributes to debates on the politics, management and geography of e-waste by highlighting the plural, ontologically multiple materialities of e-waste. It also extends conceptualisations and competing knowledges of e-waste by offering a mechanism-based account of how valuation, informality and environmental governance are co-produced in African cities.