Top Dirtiest City In Africa

1. Agbogbloshi, Ghana

Your cell phones, tablets, and computers are dying here. The two millionth city near the capital of Ghana, Accra, has become the world’s largest e-waste cemetery. Every year, about 200,000 tons of e-garbage are brought here from developed countries, from which local people mine copper and aluminum from morning to evening. The easiest way to get copper is burning, so the city is drowning in clubs of poisonous smoke. The main labor force is boys from 10 to 18 years. Pairs of lead, mercury, and arsenic undermine their health: many do not live to even 30 years.

2. Tiara-sur-Mer, Senegal

This city is sadly famous in the 2014 rankings for the case of massive acute lead poisoning. Local women earned their pennies by manually crushing used lead-acid batteries and melting the lead they mined for resale.

Lead fumes and dust filled the city. 18 children died from a rapidly progressive disorder of the nervous system. A study conducted on other members of the community (including brothers, sisters, and mothers of dead children) showed that all of them were also subjected to lead poisoning.

3. Niamey, Niger

In the mid-1980s, the Niger River was very dry, and residents drilled about 120 wells. The city was overgrowing: the population reached 700,000 people, but the water supply and sewerage systems remained the same – modern sewage treatment systems did not appear here.

Due to uncontrolled economic activities and deforestation, groundwater soon became contaminated with nitrates and bacteria, such as streptococcus. Feces are added to this mixture in the rainy season. The problem of water quality here is more acute than anywhere else on Earth. Today, every fourth child born in the capital of Niger does not live to 5 years old.

4. Nairobi, Kenya

The “trash monster” of Nairobi is not only garbage imported from developed countries but also the own waste of a megacity that has grown more than three times over a couple of decades. Here live 3 million people, and the landfill is still one, opened in 1986 and long overflowing.

Trucks bring here 1000-1200 tons of garbage every day. The landfill “lives” and moves: there are more than 3000 men, women, and children who seek out at least some raw materials for recycling, marabou and pigs “graze” here. Having scoured at the dump all day, you can earn about 4 dollars.