ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Five years after spending an unforgettable afternoon in Accra Agboglboshie, i had the opportunity this December, while visiting Ghana to return to the place that had so etched itself in my mind.
Four days, four visits i had time to get my personal picture of the situation of this piece of earth in the middle of the capital of Ghana, which was repeatedly referred to in the media as hell on earth and by the residents themselves as Sodom - Agbogbloshie - one of the largest electronic waste dump in the world.
To my surprise, on the surface, things seemed to have improved or changed a lot.
The acrid fog from the smoke of the burnt plastic parts that seemed omnipresent the last time, had almost disappeared and many of the self-built barracks too.
It took me two days in which i talked to many of the residents and walked back and forth through the whole district to find out the reason for the changes. Only when i had found a small group of men who were still using the same system, which I knew from my last stay, to burn the metal out of the plastic, could explain what happened to me.
In July 2021, the Ghanaian government with the presence of the military
demolished the entire settlement with bulldozers, despite the existences off thousands of livelyhoods.
Agbogbloshie's prominence in the international media had concerned the local government in Accra, which has repeatedly claimed that the location gives the country a bad reputation, although they have also been linked to NGOs to try to improve working conditions.
As a result of this violent eviction, many of the local workers lost their homes and financial basis.


AUTHOR
Kristof Huf was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, as son of a German/Canadian artist family.
He studied Jazzbass and Restoration.
He works and lives in Munich / Germany.


Student of Nikos Economopoulos

back to gallery