The 13th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to Ghana and the
ecological and human challenges associated with the transboundary flow of electronic
waste. The award was granted to a team made up of investigative anti-corruption
journalist and activist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and photojournalists Muntaka Chasant
and Bénédicte Kurzen (NOOR). From February 2023 to February 2024, thanks to the
human and financial support of the Fondation Carmignac, the laureates carried out a
transnational field study between Ghana and Europe.
Old Fadama, Accra, Ghana, February 9, 2023. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac
Simon Aniah, 24, burns scrap electrical
cables to recover copper by the Korle Lagoon. From Vea, northeastern Ghana, Simon and
hundreds of other young people migrate from his village and other areas in the Upper East to
Accra to engage in e-waste work as a means to achieve upward social mobility. Upper East,
the region Simon comes from, has the highest unemployment rate among the population
15-24 years in Ghana (2021 Ghana Census).
62 million tons. This is the volume of electrical and electronic waste - discarded battery- or mains-powered products,
commonly known as «e-waste» - generated worldwide in 2022, according to the latest Global E-Waste Monitor
Report published by the United Nations. The number of smartphones, connected watches, flat screens, computers
and tablets being thrown away continues to rise (82% increase since 2010), making them not only one of the world’s
biggest sources of waste, but also the most valuable (containing precious metals like gold, silver and platinum group
metals). According to the study, if this trend continues, in the absence of sustainable recycling or repair solutions,
global electronic waste will reach 82 million metric tons by 2030. In 2022, of the 62 million tons of e-waste, only 22,3 %
were collected and recycled in a dedicated channel.*
Having long invaded Asia (Russia, India, China, etc.), e-waste from Europe and the United States is arriving in extensive
quantities in the ports of West African countries such as Ghana, in violation of international treaties. A
country renowned for its political stability and respect for a multi-party system, Ghana is faced with the proliferation of
informal open-air landfill sites even closer to homes, after the dismantling of the Agbogbloshie scrapyard site in July
2021.
* The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) have joined forces in the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP) to publish the Global E-Waste Monitor
2024, with the support of the Fondation Carmignac.
It can be found at this link:
globalewaste.org (published 20 March 2024)
Accra, Ghana, February 8, 2023. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac
Horses forage in a section of the now-demolished Agbogbloshie scrapyard site. Old Fadama and Agbogbloshie, separated by the Korle Lagoon, were thriving wetlands decades ago.
It was against this backdrop that began the investigation by Anas Aremeyaw Anas and photojournalists Muntaka
Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen, which combines photography, video, audio recordings and writing. Departing from
the dramatic imagery often used by the media to portray Ghana as «the dustbin of the world», they spent a year
documenting this incredibly ambiguous and complex ecosystem, which is both a crucial economic opportunity for
thousands of people in Ghana and has a considerable human and environmental impact. Together, combining a
national and international approach, the team studied the ramifications of e-waste trafficking between Europe and
Ghana, revealing the opacity of this globalised cycle.
Delving into the complex world of second-hand electronics in Ghana and Europe, Bénédicte Kurzen documented the
e-waste flows and the communities that activate them, challenging negative stereotypes of exporters and highlighting
the inefficiency of European e-waste bureaucracy. At the other end of the chain, in Accra, the capital of Ghana,
researcher and documentary photographer Muntaka Chasant immersed himself in a sociological analysis of
this economy on which many communities depend. With precision, he analyses the social groups of e-waste workers,
revealing a hierarchical organisation and the mechanisms of migration from north-east Ghana. With his team, Anas
Aremeyaw Anas infiltrated the ports of Accra to reveal the legal and illegal flows of e-waste. Working undercover, and
using trackers implanted in illegal waste, he unmasks the strategies and corruption that enable people to circumvent
the law, both in Europe and in Ghana.
Ghana, Accra, Zongo Lane, Spring 2023.. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR
Zongo Lane is like an Alibaba cavern. Hundreds of small shops for
all types of electronics components, modules, and general parts populate the narrow streets of this old Accra
neighborhood. Repairers and often parts sellers. Broken electronics get dismantled and reused. Ghanaians, but
also Nigerians work here. It also used to be the marketplace for Used and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
(UEEE) coming from Europe but the narrow streets were not allowing all the containers to park and offload without
creating a complicated traffic situation. While in Europe the independent repairers have almost disappeared, an
entire economic ecosystem survives on this craft.
The Netherlands, Rotterdam, June 2023. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR
Zongo Lane is like an Alibaba cavern. Hundreds
of small shops for all types of electronics components, modules, and general parts populate
the narrow streets of this old Accra neighborhood. Repairers and often parts sellers. Broken
electronics get dismantled and reused. Ghanaians, but also Nigerians work here. It also
used to be the marketplace for Used and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (UEEE)
coming from Europe but the narrow streets were not allowing all the containers to park and
offload without creating a complicated traffic situation. While in Europe the independent
repairers have almost disappeared, an entire economic ecosystem survives on this craft.
Ghana, Accra, Zongo Lane, Spring 2023. © Bénédicte Kurzen for Fondation Carmignac / NOOR
Rotterdam was by far the EU port with the
largest activity in the fourth quarter of 2022, with 111 million tonnes of gross weight of goods
handled. Rotterdam was the main EU port for all types of cargo, except Ro-Ro mobile units.
(Ghana, 1985) is a Ghanaian documentary
photographer and independent researcher with long-standing interests in
issues at the intersection of human geography and environmental sociology.
He has worked at the cross field between environment and human mobility
for more than a decade. His ethnographic fieldwork has touched on
geographies of discarded materials, urban marginality, and emerging
environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and
pollution. His photography has appeared in academic journals, magazines,
and newspapers worldwide. Contesting everyday representations of sites
of environmental justice struggles, Muntaka proposes alternative forms of
geographical knowledge productions by rethinking how we imagine and
mediate distant suffering. With a postgraduate background in international
relations, he advocates for people and communities entangled in socio-
spatial struggles that have become global in nature. Also interested
in memory and future discourses, he utilizes the tensions between
remembering and forgetting and the intertwining of memory and identity to
weave narratives of alternative futures.
Bénédicte Kurzen (France, 1980) is a photographer working on cross-
cultural narratives and mythologies, opening the door to possible
redefinitions of social concepts and representations. Her photography
combines documentary elements with a metaphoric, constructed visual
language, and collaborative processes. Kurzen began her career in 2003 in
the Middle East, covering hard news in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq, before
moving to Africa where she lived and produced substantial work on social
changes and tensions in South Africa (2005-2011) and Nigeria (2011-
2023). Since 2018, she has deepened her work on mythologies in Nigeria
and China, focusing on twin cosmologies and examining the persistence of
ancient beliefs in Mayotte. Kurzen has been published internationally for the
past twenty years and received several distinctions, including participation
in the prestigious World Press Joop Swart Masterclass (2008), a Pulitzer
Center on Crisis reporting and European Journalism Centre grantee (2012,
2017), and nomination for the Visa d’Or for her work in Nigeria (2012). More
recently, she won a World Press Photo Prize (2019). She is a member of
NOOR Images and of the Photo Society.
Anas Aremeyaw Anas (Ghana, 1978) is the CEO of Tiger Eye and doubles
as the Team Leader of the Tiger Eye Foundation (a nonprofit). Tiger Eye is
a company that has engaged in several undercover assignments for many
indigenous and multilateral corporations within and outside Ghana. Anas
is an award-winning undercover investigative journalist, lawyer and anti-
corruption campaigner with global experience and acclaim. In disguise,
he finds his way into asylums, brothels, prisons, orphanages and villages,
where he methodically gathers evidence for hard-hitting stories - then
presents the evidence to authorities for those accused to be prosecuted.
This has consequently had seismic impacts on the Ghanaian judiciary, law
enforcement, professional sports, child welfare system, and mental health
delivery, among others. Anas’ journalistic work, both print and video, is
published by reputable media organizations such as the BBC, CNN, and Al
Jazeera. He has received commendations from international personalities
such as Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Bill Gates, amongst
others.
Old Fadama in Accra, Ghana, June 12, 2023. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac
Working through the night, Awimbela sifts through the soil to retrieve small pieces of copper and iron left over from the burning of waste electrical cables.
In 2009, while media and photojournalism faced an unprecedented crisis, Edouard Carmignac created the Carmignac
Photojournalism Award to support photographers in the field. Every year, it funds the production of an investigative
photo reportage on human rights violations and geo-strategic issues in the world. The Fondation Carmignac provides
the laureate with financial and human resources to carry out their project and produces both a monograph and a
traveling exhibition, aiming to shed light on the crises and challenges which the contemporary world is facing. Previous
editions of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award have focused on: Gaza (Kai Wiedenhöfer); Pashtunistan (Massimo
Berruti); Zimbabwe (Robin Hammond); Chechnya (Davide Monteleone); Iran (Newsha Tavakolian); Guyana (Christophe
Gin); Libya (Narciso Contreras); Nepal (Lizzie Sadin); the Arctic (Kadir van Lohuizen and Yuri Kozyrev); the Amazon
(Tommaso Protti); the Democratic Republic of Congo (Finbarr O’Reilly and the collective of photographers for the
project “Congo in Conversation”) and Venezuela (Fabiola Ferrero).
www.fondationcarmignac.com/photojournalism-award
Old Fadama, Accra, Ghana, February 7, 2023. © Muntaka Chasant for Fondation Carmignac
Locally collected end-of-life mobile phones sold for parts and recycling.
The Fondation Carmignac was founded in 2000 by Edouard Carmignac, a French
entrepreneur, CEO and Chairman of asset management company Carmignac.
Today, it is structured around three main pillars which developed one after the other.
The Carmignac Collection, which has over 300 works of contemporary art, the
Carmignac Photojournalism Award and the Villa Carmignac in Porquerolles which
offers temporary exhibitions and a rich cultural programme in a 2000-square-meter
art space set in a 15-hectare estate at the heart of a protected site.
From 27 April to 3 November 2024, the Villa Carmignac presents The Infinite
Woman, curated by Alona Pardo.
www.fondationcarmignac.com
