Old habits die hard in Agbogbloshie

For over 10 years, we used the area of Agbogbloshie on the edge of the Ghanaian capital city of Accra as a case study.

There was a video on Vimeo called e-Wasteland. It is still available to view. It has no narration, but some text captions and the sounds of the activity in this area. It was made by David Fedele in 2012 - which was when we started using it. You will possibly need to login (a free account can be created) to view it.

I thought that the activity had ended due to new methods and efforts to educate the workforce into the risks they were taking - particuarly the accumulation of mercury and other toxic heavy metals into their bloodstreams which shortened their life expectancy.

This article from this weekend suggests that actually the practice is still taking place, so we will perhaps revisit the place, and see what we can see - the area of burning used to be very visible on Google Earth.

Stereotyping Africa

A slightly different take on 'the danger of a single story' which we have used already with students...

President Biden addressing the African Union Summit

Listen carefully to what he has to say and identify how Rwanda is part of this process. What progress is it making on the priorities that President Biden identifies?

Recorded on the 5th of February 2021 

Rwanda - how to make a word cloud

Starting a short unit on Rwanda with Y9 this week.

One task is to create a word cloud in the shape of Rwanda.

Instructions here by Mr P

Here's the Rwanda outline shape that you need too:

Source: https://vemaps.com/ - well worth a look

Youthful populations

Useful for our Y9 topic on Africa - exploring youthful populations, and countries where the median population is aged 19.

Age-Sex Pyramids

 A few issues with these of course, but this is a helpful video,

Population pyramid from Ined on Vimeo.

The population includes males and females of all ages.

To see at a glance how they are distributed by age and sex, demographers use a population pyramid. But, as you will see, it doesn't always have a pyramid shape. And how do we build one?

Crédits
Designed by : Gilles Pison et Sabine Belloc
Multimedia Project Manager : Thierry Jori
Produced by : SO2 Media
An animation of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies and of Cité des sciences et de l'industrie

Africa's wealth

Map of the most valuable export goods of African countries.#map #maps #cartography #geography #topography #trade #means #export #product #economy #africa #african #oil #gold #diamonds #coffee #cotton #goods #trading #exports #produce #mining #continent pic.twitter.com/iEweIyP0AI

— MapScaping (@MapScaping) February 19, 2019

Fascinating fact... can you explain it ?

Mobile Phones in Africa: >500m Mobile Phones Produced in Africa: 0”
— Mr Geographer (@MrGeographer) May 15, 2014

Why do you think this could happen ?

Questions for Naasra - working in a graveyard for computers

We have introduced you to a place called Agbogbloshie
It is near the city of Accra on the coast of Ghana.
Naasra is one of the people who are making a living there... just.

Her picture is included in a photo story which was published in the New York Times.
The picture can't be reproduced here for copyright reasons, but you should take a look at the sequence to get an idea.

Re-watch the BBC CLICK sequence (it's only 4 minutes long) to see the impact of illegal e-waste imports on the soil, the atmosphere and the people of this place.



Also check out this Andrew McConnell photo essay and further links, many of which tell a similar (and in many ways familiar) story.

Is any of your family's old electronic waste here?
Can you be sure that it isn't?