E-waste report exposes toxic dumping in Kenya’s informal settlements

Kenya imports approximately 70% of its electronic equipment, much of which arrives near the end of its useful life, generating an estimated 51,000 metric tonnes of electronic waste annually. This makes e-waste the country’s fastest-growing waste stream, yet only about 1% is formally recycled.

Waste pickers in Kenya are said to be paying the heaviest price for the escalating e-waste crisis. Exposure to toxic chemicals released during unsafe handling of electronic waste - including open burning, acid leaching, and manual disassembling - has left 61% of waste pickers in Nairobi’s Korogocho settlement reporting health problems. Many suffer from respiratory illnesses, while more than a third report skin infections.

At the launch of a policy brief and factsheet on ‘The escalating e-waste crisis devastating communities in Kenya and Ghana,’ held earlier this week, Greenpeace Africa warned that toxic electronic waste, often disguised as donations or recycling, is putting lives and ecosystems at risk.

Hellen Kahaso Dena, Pan-African Plastics Project Lead at Greenpeace Africa, stated that Kenya is witnessing “waste colonialism” in action. “Wealthy countries are offloading toxic burdens onto African communities under the guise of development and charity,” Dena said.

“When only about 1% of e-waste is formally recycled, the remainder is handled in informal settings where waste pickers, many from vulnerable groups, are exposed to dangerous substances such as lead, cadmium, and carcinogenic fumes from burning electronics.”

According to the Greenpeace Africa policy brief, surveys conducted in Nairobi’s Korogocho informal settlement paint a harrowing picture of the health toll on waste workers.

The report shows that 61% of respondents reported health issues linked to e-waste handling, with 47.2% experiencing respiratory complications and 35.3% reporting skin damage or infections.

The report further indicates that children as young as six years old are involved in sorting and burning e-waste to extract metals such as copper, silver, and aluminium.

In the process, they are exposed to carcinogenic fumes containing toxins including lead, cadmium, beryllium, and furans.

“These are not abstract numbers. Behind every statistic is a mother, a child, a young man trying to earn a living by picking through the world’s discarded electronics with his bare hands. That is the human cost of our collective failure to manage this crisis,” Dena emphasized, underscoring the scale of the health emergency facing informal workers.

Environmentalists are now calling for stronger political goodwill among African governments to enforce Extended Producer Responsibility regulations, formalize policies that protect informal waste workers, and implement stricter measures, working with customs authorities, to stop illegal e-waste shipments at border points.

The report comes at a time when Kenya is tightening its import policies on electronic goods. The country has already implemented, and continues to strengthen, restrictions on the importation of e-waste and aging electronics to curb pollution and protect public health.

Launched in Nairobi on the United Nations International Day of Zero Waste, the report brought together policymakers, civil society actors, researchers, and community representatives to confront what Greenpeace describes as a deepening crisis of waste colonialism.

The event also featured an immersive photojournalism exhibition by Kenyan photojournalist Edwin Nyamasyo, whose powerful images capture the human and environmental scale of the crisis as experienced by frontline communities in Kenya and Ghana.