E-waste in Ghana, BBC News

What happens to old consumer electronics when you are finished with it? It is safely recycled, right? Well, may be not. Much of it becomes part of a lucrative, international trade in illicit e-waste and ends up dumped in countries like Ghana in West Africa.

Here it is informally "processed" by young men and boys who smelt it in open fires in an attempt to extract the precious metals it contains. This causes untold damage to the environment, not to mention, serious health problems for those carrying out the processing.

For this investigation for the BBC, I travelled to Ghana in West Africa to look into the health and environmental implications of the informal processing of used tech. I also went on the trail of used technology coming into the country and found that while Europe has set its sights on banning the export of tech that no longer works, it has underestimated how discerning Africa's consumers are. It may not be broken tech that's the problem, but fully functioning second-hand electronics that Africans simply do not want to buy.