The world's most prominent informal e-waste recycling site sits in the Accra suburb of Old Fadama, on the edge of the Odaw River. For years it was among the most photographed places in West Africa — a burning landscape of monitors, keyboards, and tangled wire that made visible the global afterlife of consumer electronics. Regulations and partial clearance operations have reduced the most acute burning since the early 2020s, but the site continues to operate, and the wider Old Fadama settlement, one of Accra's largest informal neighbourhoods, surrounds it.
Visiting requires care. Go with a local guide, have permission from community leaders or local organisations who work there, and respect the workers who make their living here. The scene is not a spectacle — it is a workplace and a community. The nearby Agbogbloshie market, one of the largest second-hand car parts and scrap-metal markets in West Africa, is separately interesting and considerably more accessible: vendors selling every conceivable spare part, mechanics working in the open, and a commercial energy that has nothing to do with electronics recycling.