Africa, in the strategic calculations of the more developed countries, is a dumping ground for their toxic wastes and e-wastes. Africans themselves do not see this as a source of their socio-political and economic setbacks. Right from the time of general accession of African countries into national sovereignty in the 1960s, the use of Africa for development of Europe was raised. Africa was and is still seen by Europeans as a source of raw materials for their development. Nigeria, under the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon as Head of State and Dr Okoi Arikpo as Commissioner for External Affairs, objected made it clear that under no circumstances would Nigeria accept the exclusive use of Africa as a source of raw materials for the development of Europe and to the detriment of Africa. However, crises and conflicts are frequently aided and abetted by the developed countries to ensure the procurement of resource materials and friendly governments in power. Any opposition to this policy stand is always dealt with manu militari.
The people of Africa themselves do not help the matter by encouraging Europeanisation of their lifestyles. What is referred to as ‘Tokunbo’ in Nigeria, that is, second-hand or third-hand imported goods, is not peculiar to Nigeria. More noted here are Tokunbo vehicles and Tokunbo hairs for ladies. Most shamefully, African women buy imported second hand clothes, hairs, shoes. They are wrapped up in the glory of Tokunbo outfits and cars. This shameful pride has lent support to the advanced countries in making Africa a dumping ground for their unwanted wastes: Tokunbo cars and vehicle spare parts, e-wastes and toxic wastes. Most unfortunately, however, criminally human wastes have now been added with the cases of Rwanda and Eswatini.
Africa as Dumping Site for Toxic and E-Wastes
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Africa was the testing ground for the three atomic bombs carried out in 1960 by the Republic of France. The testing took place in February, April, and December 1960 in the Reggane area of the Sahara Desert. Nigeria complained bitterly against the French tests through Great Britain, the then colonial master. Nigeria feared the implications of radioactive effects on the people and noted that the wind might be polluted by radioactivity and would be blowing southwardly. The protests were to no avail as France argued that whatever radioactive effects there might be could not reach the habitat people lived in. The disregard for Nigeria’s protests led to rupture of their diplomatic ties on 5 January 1961. The rupture was largely influenced by the thinking that if there would be no harmful radioactive effects, why were the tests not carried out somewhere else in Europe? There was no answer to the question.
Without jot of doubt, the genesis of Africa as a dumping ground for unwanted militaro-economic activities in Europe is traceable to the French atomic bomb tests in 1960. Since then, Africa has been a dumping ground for two main types of European wastes: material and human wastes. As regards material wastes, they are essentially, on the one hand, the toxic wastes (chemical wastes, radioactive wastes exposure to which there can be health hazards such as respiratory issues, birth defects, eye infections; contamination of soil and water and general environmental degradation), and, on the other hands, e-wastes which can be household or industrial in character and origin.
E-waste is considered one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world and a silent killer in West Africa, to borrow the words of https://theconversation.com. It is very problematic because every e-waste contains lead, mercury, cadmium, and bromated flame retardants all of which are very harzardous. In the same vein, toxic waste refers to any hazardous material that can be, found in solids, liquids, and gases. Toxic waste is not only unwanted but also has the potential to harm living organisms if inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin. Consequently, both e-waste and toxic waste are dangerous to human life in whichever way it is looked at. If this is so, are Africans ignorant of this fact?
What is problematic and most unfortunate is that African people often underscore the monetary aspect or financial profit and consciously neglect the human impact of toxic wastes, particularly on their health. For instance, it is on record that Ghana generates about US$100 million every year from levies collected from importers of e-wastes. In Nigeria, about 100,000 people engaged in the informal e-waste business. In fact, the conversation.com has clearly shown how Africa is being exploited as Africans have eyes that can no longer see, ears that cannot hear, and life that is hardly thought-provoking anymore. As noted by the converesation.com. ‘in 2006 Trafigura, a Netherlands-based multinational oil trading company, didn’t want to pay the EUR500,000 (about $620,000) to treat and dispose of its toxic waste in the Netherlands. And so it approached an Ivoirian contractor to dispose of over 500,000 litres of toxic waste. They paid the Ivoirian sub-contractor in Abidjan EUR18,500 (about US$22,000). The waste was disposed of at over 12 different locations around Abidjan. They claimed the material was non-toxic, hence no need for treatment.’
Many questions cannot but be raised from this quotation: why is the cost of disposal of toxic wastes too exorbitant for the Trafigura? Why did Trafigura refuse to pay the demanded EUR500,000 for the waste disposal? Why the choice of Africa, and particularly why the choice of the Côte d’Ivoire? Why are other regions of the world not considered for waste disposal? Why is the focus always on Africa as a dumping ground? How do we explain the cheap cost of disposing the toxic waste in Africa? Can there be any waste disposal without the complicity of Africans? More than 100,000 Ivoirians were sick and 15 of them eventually died as a result of the radioactive effects of the waste which were fraudulently presented by the local subcontractor as not dangerous. Are the dumping sites of the toxic wastes free from contamination as of today?
And true enough, the Government of the Côte d’Ivoire was compelled, not only to make the Trafigura pay a reparation of CFA95 billion (US$200 million), for the clean-up, but also to compensate the victims. The problem here is not simply the payment of reparation but the unaddressed problem of Africans being the first problem of Africa, of being the first impediment to the implementation of any continental decision. African people make the objective of evolving an African solution to Africa’s problem very difficult. They facilitate foreign exploitation and degradation of Africa and its people.
For example, what the exporters of wastes to Africa do is to flout obligations created by international conventions by disguising toxic waste as not harmful and e-waste as re-usable electronics when exporting them to West and Central Africa. In the words of Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood of the University of St Andrews and Ibukun J. Adewumi of the University of Wollongong, ‘Western companies and businesses (primarily those in Europe and the US) target countries in the Gulf of Guinea (that is, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire), as a dump for their toxic waste. This, despite the knowledge of the physiological and environmental effects of this waste. These African countries do not have the facilities to enable the safe disposal of hazardous and toxic waste.’ In spite of the lack of facilities, about 500 container loads of about 500,000 pieces of used electronic devices, most of which are no longer reusable, enter Nigeria’s port from Europe, the US and Asia. The e-wastes necessarily pollute the environment because they are not well recycled contrarily to the requirements of many international conventions.
There is, for instance, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, as well as the Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions. The Basel Convention only restricts and controls the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes for disposal. But more interestingly, there is the Bamako Convention against illegal dumping of hazardous wastes in Africa. Its declared objectives are to prohibit the import of all hazardous and radioactive wastes into Africa for whatever reasons. The objective is also to minimise and control transboundary movement of hazardous wastes with Africa, as well as prohibit all ocean and inland water dumping or incineration of hazardous wastes.
If the main objective of the Bamako Convention is to prevent the dumping of electronic and toxic wastes on African soil, how do we explain the fact that Nigeria signed the Bamako Convention in 1988, but is yet to ratify it, not to talk about domestication of it? There was also the issue of the more than 10,000 barrels of toxic waste from Italy, dumped in Koko, a small fishing village in Nigeria, in June 1988. By that time, Nigeria did not have relevant regulations to address the problem until the adoption of the RA 6969 Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Control Act of 1990.
What about the August 2006 toxic waste dumping by Probo Koala, a Panama-registered ship, chartered by Trafigura, a Singapore-based oil and commodity company, in the Côte d’Ivoire? The local subcontractor handling wastes was a company called Tommy. Without any iota of doubt, the Ivoirian government failed in its state responsibility to prevent the dumping of toxic wastes on its soil. The African Court on Human, and People’s Rights not only raised the international and state responsibility of the Ivoirian government, but also the need for its corporate accountability for not preventing the incident. Whatever is the case, e-waste and toxic waste are no more the critical issues but the new dimensions of human waste dumping in Africa.
Human Wastes Dumping: Rwanda and Eswatini
For us in this column, human beings, for various reasons, are no longer better than e-wastes or toxic wastes, simply because the powerful countries and their leaders equate human beings with them, and therefore not deserving or eligible to live among the peoples in such powerful countries or on their sovereign territory. This issue of not deserving or not being eligible to reside in the United Kingdom and the United States, for examples, arises from alleged offences of immigration and claims of right of establishment. When people engage in infractions, they are kept in prisons in the country of the infraction. When the country of infraction is no longer feeling comfortable to house the criminals and is looking for another home for them in a third country whose nationality the criminals do not have, then there is the need to engage in more critical thinking.
At the level of the United Kingdom, for instance, there are some people seeking the status of a refugee in the UK but the British Government has not been favourably disposed to the asylum seekers, hence the need to find alternative places. The British came up with what is called the Rwanda Asylum Plan, a short expression for the UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership.
The asylum plan is the initiative of the governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The targeted concerned people are illegal migrants and asylum seekers but who are unwanted in Britain and who are considered for possible relocation to Rwanda through processing, asylum, and resettlement. Asylum seekers who are adjudged successful were relocated to Rwanda and they cannot return to the UK.
For Rwanda’s acceptance to host the unwanted illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, Britain commits itself to providing financial support for the migrants’ relocation and accommodation costs to move to Rwanda, as well as invest in a development fund for Rwanda. Rwanda is on record to have initially received £290 million from Britain with an expected further payment of £100 million. £20,000 is payable to every migrant or refugee accepted by Rwanda, as well as payment of, at least, £120 million after all the 300 deportees might have arrived and settled in Rwanda
Without doubt, this is a lot of money for Rwanda. But how does the Rwandan government expects to ensure national security with refugees and illegal migrants coming from the crisis-ridden Middle East, especially from Iran? Is Rwanda under-populated? If there is the need to boost the local population, must the boosting be that of illegal migrants or refugees? Who has forgotten the history of the Boers’ settlement in South Africa? Are the white South Africans in the Cape Province in South Africa not currently laying claim to their own national sovereignty?
What happens when a tenant is claiming ownership of his rented room? Is this not a new basis for a fresh war between the White and Black South Africans that is already in the making? Why is it that Rwandans are not learning from history? Why is Rwanda unnecessarily emphasising monetary gains over self-dignity and to the detriment of the need for respect for Rwandan independence and sovereignty? If illegality is not tolerable in the United Kingdom, why is it an attraction for Rwanda? Shame and shame on Rwanda’s policy makers for their intellectual myopia and for selling their people into a new form of enslavement.
Besides, the legality or illegality of the asylum plan in the United Kingdom necessarily delayed the first flight of the deportees scheduled for 14 June 2022 as authorised by the High Court of Justice. The European Court of Human Rights’ introduction of interim measures was also another dynamic. However, with the ruling of the Court of Appeal on 29 June 2023 that the plan was unlawful, with the eventual appeal to the Supreme Court which concurred with the ruling of the lower court on 15 November 2023, and, most importantly, with the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 overruling the judgments and declaration of Rwanda as very safe, there was no more any obstacles to the Rwanda asylum plan to be given full effect.
Some observations about the plan are noteworthy. First, the plan provides that deportees not granted a refugee status or humanitarian protection can be granted permanent residence to enable their integration into the Rwandan society. The deportees in this category were not Rwandans by origin or by cultural affiliation. By implication, non-indigenous people have been indirectly brought to populate Rwanda. This means a shift from colonialism by toxic and e-waste to colonialism by repopulation. The passing of the Rwanda bill by the British Parliament and assenting to it by King Charles makes it a law, meaning that asylum seekers and illegal migrants can henceforth be easily deported to Rwanda.
The Rwandan case is still tolerable than that of Eswatini. While the problem at the level of the UK is limited to illegality of immigration and refugees seeking refuge because of the political insecurity or alleged threats to their lives in their home countries, formerly known as Swaziland, the problem in Eswatini is essentially about the already incarcerated five criminals whose originating home countries have refused to accept them, but who Eswatini has opted to accept, again for financial gains. This cannot but be again most unfortunate for various reasons.
First, the United States is behaving as a diplomatic instructor who places himself at the crescendo of the continuum of authority and in which Eswatini is placed at the bottom. In other words, the US gives instructions that Eswatini has to comply with. The US has deported five migrants who have been convicted for various reasons to Eswatini under the third-country program of President Donald Trump. They are currently held under solitary confinement and this is generating domestic controversies in the country. This is shameful.
Secondly, either for domestic reasons of force majeure or as agreed to with the United States, Eswatini does not appear to be the final bus stop for the five deported migrants because the government spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, who ‘declined to identify the correctional facility or facilities where the five men are held, citing security reasons…told the Associated Press that Eswatini planned to ultimately repatriate the five to their home countries with the help of a UN agency’ (vide “US immigration: Migrants deported by the US to Eswatini being held in solitary confinement” (The Guardian (London), and also PBS News, Gerald Imray of the Associated Press, “Men deported by US to Eswatini in Africa will be held in solitary confinement for undetermined time,” Friday 18 July 2025).
Thirdly, if the ultimate objective is to repatriate the deportees to their home countries, why is it that the International Organisation for Migration that has responsibility for deportation, has not been involved in the whole exercise of deportation? The deportation has been the exclusive responsibility of the US so far. If countries to which the deportees belong are not willing to take back their citizens, what will be the fresh arguments that will be more convincing to make the deportees quickly acceptable? Is Eswatini not serving as a messenger for the United States in this regard? Will the government not eventually bring shame to the whole of Africa bearing in mind that the convicted deportees are not from Africa but from Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos? Why would any African country want to host people convicted for rape, murder and other crimes when the United States that convicted them has bigger correctional facilities? Why is it that the criminals are all from Latin America and the Caribbean? If the United States is fearing that there might be an easier jail break for them in the United States, what would prevent those that have the potential to enable the jail break in the US not go as far as Eswatini to do the same, especially that Eswatini cannot be said to have a more sophisticated correctional facility than the US?
Rwanda and Eswatini can accommodate unwanted criminals, illegal migrants, and refugees from any country of the world, based on their sovereign rights. The right, however, becomes a noisome problem if both countries are Member States of the African Union which has pledged to collectively defend Africa, speak with one voice, and also promote the resolution of African problems by African people. Comparatively, many people believe that President Donald Trump is a reckless and senseless leader considering his foreign policy attitudes and behaviours. I used to belong to people who see him as a disaster. With his deportation of five people, convicted for murder, rape and other crimes, to Eswatini, I am no longer left in any shadow of doubt that President Trump knows what he wants in international relations, US hegemony by use of force and manu militari. To believe that he is wrong is to also suggest that the majority of Americans that voted him in as US president are also wrong. They are not wrong. They only have a new vision. It is African leaders that are wrong. As international relations is now fraught with attitudinal insanity, only an insane leader can accept the use of his country as a dumping ground for unwanted criminals elsewhere, especially when the deportees are not his nationals. If African leaders accept to be used to undermine Africa’s dignity of purpose, there is no need for any African Union anymore. In fact, the 1810 principle of uti possidetis should be completely jettisoned to allow for a complete redrawing of the international borders of all African countries. It is by so doing that Africa can truly develop.
