It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl. ‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain. Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance. Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from […]
It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl. ‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain. Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance. Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from […]
It was late May 2020, on a cold, rainy afternoon, in an area once rated alongside Chernobyl.
‘Akufo-Addo,’ 8 years old, stood on e-waste heap (discarded computer parts and broken cathode-ray tube [CRT] glasses) in the rain.
Born Kevin Twum Barimah, he’s nicknamed after Ghana’s current president due to their uncanny resemblance.
Akufo-Addo cannibalizes from discarded e-waste on the fringes of Agbogbloshie, Ghana, for a living.
Chattering and shivering in a sweater with a broken zipper, he used his bare hands and rocks to break apart old televisions sets for the iron materials inside.
He was desperate, and needed the money very badly for food.
I always intervene whenever I run into ‘Akufo-Addo,’ but that doesn’t solve the problem.
Iron scrap sold for GH₵1.00 (around $0.17) per kilo at Agbogbloshie in late May 2020.
He had what appeared to be acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. When I asked if he had had any medical attention, he responded in twi, a local dialect: “me gyinsor.”
“My urine,” he said.
He told me his mother asked him to put his urine inside his eye as a way to cure the inflammation of the conjunctiva.
It was the first time I had heard of using one’s own urine as a home treatment for conjunctivitis.
Read more about Akufo-Addo here:
Child Labour in Ghana: Meet 8-Year-Old ‘Akufo-Addo’
This 8-year-old nicknamed after Ghana’s president is engaged in hazardous child labour on the margins of Accra, Ghana. See how he navigates the underside of Agbogbloshie.
Learn more about the hazardous child labour situation at Agbogbloshie here:
Urban Outcasts: Children of Agbogbloshie
See hazardous child labour at Agbogbloshie and a missing child found through this article.
Child Labourer Cut By A CRT Glass
Turned away from Akufo-Addo for a moment, and Joseph Akwah, 17 years old, was bleeding from a cut from a broken CRT glass.
Children engaged in hazardous work on the fringes of Agbogbloshie are not only exposed to heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium, they are also regularly cut by broken CRT glass.
Reclaiming precious metals from electronic waste (e-waste) is a major source of livelihood in the developing world. Joseph Akwah is a 17-year-old adolescent boy who uses his bare hands and stones to dismantle e-waste for the precious metals inside on the fringes of Agbogbloshie, a scrapyard in Ghana renowned for its heavy metals pollution. An […]
Hi, Muntaka Chasant here. I'm, among many other things, an entrepreneur and a documentary photographer. I'm here on the front lines of urban struggle — only with my wits and cameras — capturing key moments, collecting untold stories, and helping to forge new paths.