Benjamin Karanja sits behind a glass counter stacked with refurbished smartphones and laptops in a small electronics shop on Kimathi Street in Nairobi. His business imports close to 2,000 second hand devices each month, mostly from the United Kingdom. For many customers, the business is a lifeline and a gateway to digital inclusion. The shop serves groups such as university students seeking affordable laptops and boda boda riders replacing cracked phones. Many of these buyers would otherwise be priced out of new electronics.

In 2007, Metal Refinery (EPZ) Ltd, a lead-acid battery smelting plant, started operations in Owino Uhuru slums, an informal neighbourhood in Kenya’s coastal City of Mombasa. Operating near homes, businesses, and waterways, and without proper environmental safeguards, the company extracted lead from old car batteries through smelting. Apart from lead, the smelting process generated lead dust, toxic fumes, sludge, and wastewater. The pollutants found their way into the air, soil and water sources used by locals.

By William Abala

The movement of hazardous waste across Africa is not only a matter of policy. It is woven into daily life, from the plastic containers used in homes and schools to old vehicles on the road and waste arriving through ports.

This reality came into sharp focus during the Bamako Convention Clearing-House Mechanism Dialogue at USIU–Africa, where policymakers, experts, and regional representatives met to confront gaps in enforcement, accountability, and public awareness around hazardous waste governance.

At eight in the morning in Dagoretti, whilst lessons begin at nearby schools and teachers call out names from class registers, a different routine unfolds behind a row of shops near the main road.

Nine boys, all of school-going age, are gathered at an informal scrap metal yard, bending over piles of burnt electric wires, twisted iron sheets and broken electronics. None of them are in school.

At eight in the morning in Dagoretti, whilst lessons begin at nearby schools and teachers call out names from class registers, a different routine unfolds behind a row of shops near the main road.

Nine boys, all of school-going age, are gathered at an informal scrap metal yard, bending over piles of burnt electric wires, twisted iron sheets and broken electronics. None of them are in school.

Somalia is set to strengthen its environmental protections as it nears ratification of the Bamako Convention, a key treaty aimed at keeping hazardous waste out of Africa.

Bushra Ahmed Abdi, senior advisor to the Somali Ambassador on UNON, UNEP, and UN-HABITAT, delivered the statement, emphasising the urgent need to protect human life and the environment.

She stressed that the discussions were about more than policy.

Status under the Convention
Kenya signed the Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa on 29 January 1991 and ratified it on 1 May 1996. Ratification created binding obligations to prohibit the import of hazardous and radioactive waste, regulate hazardous waste generated domestically, designate national competent authorities and focal points, and report to the Convention Secretariat to enable regional oversight and compliance review.