The Effects of Exporting Used PCs To Africa

retroworks writes "According to this UK MailOnline story, computers donated to Africa are causing quite a few problems. The BBC does a similar story on the junk computers from rich countries found on the ground in Africa. But all of the footage is of the junk PCs; there is no film of any repaired or good computers. There have been a dozen stories now about the bad apples. It seems like there have to be good ones, too, to cover the costs of shipping. Some of the ones in the Mail story actually look decent. Is there more balanced coverage of used computer exports, many of which provide affordable technology to poor people? Organizations like Greenpeace and Basel Action Network are promoting electronics recyclers with zero-export policies. One organization, the World Reuse Repair and Recycling Association, is promoting a 'Fair Trade Coffee' approach to moderate the number of bad computers exported, and has a video showing both sides of the story. A ban on exports leaves Africa with a choice of spending a year's income on a new PC, buying mixed loads of computers from undercapitalized recyclers, or remaining without this level of technology. And our choice seems to be to donate a decent computer mixed with other people's junk, or to grind it up in a perverse tribute to Vance Packard, as 'obsolescence in hindsight.'"

Comments

Good ones don't count

[unixcrab]

The problem is, all the good charity work doesn't cancel out the toxic fallout from the scrapped hardware. Besides, the junk the richer countries send there is hardly a charitable donation, it's a dumping ground.

Re:Good ones don't count

[geoskd]

if the EU and US got rid of unfair tarifs and subsidies on agricultural products many many more people could afford this.

Those same import restrictions are one of the most important factors supporting the first world economies. Globalization tends to level the playing field, so that poor contries get wealthier and rich countries get poorer, but we in the first world have a vested interest in preventing this, hence the tarifs. If you remove them, yes you will create more wealth in the third world, as new jobs are created to provide cheap goods and services for the first world. The first world however sees a very negative downside result: unemployment and a decrease in standard of living. Why would any bureaucrat (elected or otherwise) sign them self up for that kind of trouble at home? For anyone who doesn't believe me, just look at what is happening with engineering and IT jobs in the US. global trade has given the Chinese and Indian economies a tremendous boost, but the cost has been American jobs. These second world nations are quickly becoming first world nations, but the US by contrast is now seeing the first generation in its history that has failed to see an increase in the standard of living from one generation to the next. Mark my words: the US is on the decline, because we sold our future to China and India for some cheap consumer goods. Half our population now has to mortgage their kids to afford those same goods that we used to make at home, and things are showing every sign of getting worse. The cost of these things hasn't gone up, our ability to buy has gone down. We have quite effectively wiped out the middle class in the US and with it goes our economy.

-=Geoskd

News?

[Opportunist]

We used "development aid" for ages to get rid of our surplus and other crap we'd have had to dispose of for a lot of money, now we do the same with electronics. Where's this news?

I remember someone doing humanitary work there, giving a speech and essentially saying "Please help us. By not helping us". When we dump free food on a third world country, we ruin their farmers because they can't compete with free food. When we dump free clothing on them, we ruin the few textile mills they have. Essentially, what we do with development aid is to push them more and more into dependency because we ruin whatever industry for the local market might start to grow. Instead we force them to build industries for export, so they can somehow pay back the "development help" we "grant" them.

Want to help? Then don't. Don't send your crap down there. Start trading with them. But not with some international corporation that squeezes the country and the people dry. Trade with companies from there.

Re:News?

[thermian]

When we dump free food on a third world country, we ruin their farmers because they can't compete with free food.

Nice sentiment, but, you know, the 'third world' is a big place, and surprise surprise, if you don't live near one of these food producers, and there's a famine, you're dead unless someone gives you food.

None of the Charities are saying that providing food is a long term solution, its just that its hard to talk long term to people whose kids will be dead by the end of the week if you don't hand over some rice now.

Re:News?

[thermian]

Being a parent I find myself sympathising with the parents who know nothing of the wider reasons for the current famine, and who are solely concerned with feeding their child.

Fewer images from news coverage of famines have effected me more then those of parents burying kids who died of starvation.

Believe me, if your kids life is on the line, you give not a fuck about the morrow, just so long as that child is alive to see it.

Re:News?

[Bert64]

If they are starving, it's because they don't have sufficient resources to sustain their current population. If you let them starve, the population will contract to a sustainable level. If you give them food, the population will increase to even more unsustainable levels meaning you have to keep giving them food or face an even bigger level of starvation.

They really need to stop having so many kids, smaller families will put far less of a strain on the available resources.

And these third world countries were doing just fine before the europeans went and interfered with them... We really should just leave them alone to make their own way without interference.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone who actually gets it. Every other species on the planet naturally lives and dies by such logic. Human beings though (especially those who live in first-world countries) seem to think that large numbers of people living within small radii is somehow normal. If there isn't enough natural-born prey to hunt (ie: without resorting to breeding) and/or fauna to pick, then a larger population is _not supposed to exist_! Only mankind could think there's a way to cheat the inevitable.

The fact is that humanity isn't dying off fast enough. In fact, our planetary population continues to increase. Someday the phony sustainability we've been living under is going to crash, and billions are going to die (as they should).

Think about it. If we were talking about an overpopulation of polar bears, birds, or deer that threatened the balance of the planet's combined ecosystem, mankind would have no problem murdering these animals in the billions to fix the problem. Isn't it funny how we overlook such ideas when it's our own "masters of the universe" species that is the problem?

Re:News?

[sleigher]

This point is important, except that it is exceptionally hypocritical to outlaw slavery in our home countries while supporting it abroad. I know it's not technically slavery but it is in many ways. I think 9 year olds should be in school, not a sweat shop.

Re:News?

[NemoinSpace]

I was going to mod you into oblivion, but preservation of your post will serve to remind me; people like you really exist.

The soulless anonymous coward dies a thousand deaths, the starving die but once.

Re:News?

[thermian]

That's a tad nazi-ish.

Actually no, that's exactly nazi-ish.

Care to tell me how you'd deal with the epidemic of obesity in the west?

Render down 1 in 10? Start apportioning food based on a persons worth?

Do tell.

Re:News?

[fastest fascist]

I for one am rather glad we tend to, apart from some notable exceptions, overlook ideas that amount to mass murder. It makes me feel that little bit safer to know that at least my neighbours are likely to feel a tad uncomfortable with the idea of killing me "to save mankind".

If you truly feel drastic measures should be taken to reduce the human population, I invite you to start with yourself. Pick a building 6 storeys or more high and jump off the top. Or are you saying it's the OTHER humans that need thinning down, not you? Isn't it funny how we overlook some obvious solutions when it's our very selves that are the problem?

Re:News?

[Opportunist]

It's not bad that you send goods into struggling countries. It's what goods are being sent there. Sending there machines they can't produce themselves to make creation of goods easier is a good thing. But that's certainly not what happens in most cases.

Our thinking of charity works without taking the implications into account. We see someone threatened by famine, so we send food. This is a good idea when the famine is already killing people, it is a very bad idea, though, when there are farms that can't produce enough. Those farms are killed by free food. Basic supply and demand, when there's free food, you can't sell yours. It would make more sense to send farming machinery and fertilizers to increase harvest. Instead, if we think past immediate "send food", we send engineered "power crops" that have the, for this area, very negative impact that they're infertile for the next season, so we have to send more seeds. And they eventually have to buy them since we killed their own.

Basically, what we deem "development aid" these days is more and more nothing but an attempt to make the lesser developed countries more and more dependent on us. Either directly by making them dependent on our consumer goods (food, clothing, etc, by killing their own industry by sending free stuff), or by using a quite fiendish vendor lock in due to terminator crops or machines that require highly sophisticated spare parts.

A prime example was a high tech water pump. Sure, it did provide the people with water. But at the same time, this pump required trained personnell to erect and maintain it, it required high tech spare parts and was quite expensive to maintain. A more sensible solution would have been a hand pump or another device that we'd consider "low tec", that could be easily maintained by the local people with local parts. I've seen very creative designs, they ain't dumb or lazy, and they're the best people I've ever seen when it comes to jury-rigging stuff, but you can't expect someone to come up with a way to jury-rig a machine that requires microelectronics when the welding transformer you built out of a few yards of copper cable and some old magnets is about as high-tech as you get.

KISS has never been a more important thing to keep in mind than when it comes to sensible development aid.

Re:News?

[rohan972]

If there isn't enough natural-born prey to hunt (ie: without resorting to breeding) and/or fauna to pick, then a larger population is _not supposed to exist_!

Supposed by whom? God? You? Who is this supposer that requires human populations to not exist except by hunter/gatherer subsistence, and why should we follow his dictates? We don't live by natural means. Artificial means made by human skill or produced by humans. By definition pretty much everything we do is not natural. Get used to it.

Re:News?

[linuxrocks123]

Yeah. Get it. You have kids; you have the whole "parental mind warp" thing that comes with it going (anyone who thinks Steve Jobs's reality distortion field is bad hasn't observed some parents...), and it makes me personally very happy that you love your children so much you'd probably be willing to cause a global thermonuclear holocaust and kill off the entire rest of the planet just so your oh so wonderful spawn could live.

But that doesn't really help solve the problem. Obviously children dying is bad, and we obviously want to stop that, but we also don't want them to sink into further dependence. And, a MAJOR part of the problem, actually ... is those children. Overpopulation is one of the worst aggravating factors of Africa's crisis.

Since we can't really kill the children, and we don't really want to let them die, we feed them. Then those children reach breeding age and soon afterwards create more children, which also need food. And the circle continues.

So what do we do? Well, a number of approaches have been proposed, including teaching the children how to not make more children the instant they become fertile. But it's really painfully obvious that we need to look further ahead than "stop them from starving", because we're just making the hole deeper. If you're sympathetic to their plight because you also reproduced, try to look for ways to stop the plight in the future, not just mitigate it in the present.

Re:The real problem...

[arkane1234]

I'm going to guess you have no clue what the person is talking about, and simply spouting off with something that sounds like rhetorical racist-flagging when in actuality the problem being referred to is the social mentality of taking what's needed with violence.

The last time I checked, there really aren't many times in America, China, Russia, European nations, or even Canada where a large group of militia held back food from large numbers of individuals and systematically assassinated droves of people in a given path. At least not for the last 200 or so years.

Easy!

[raehl]

Care to tell me how you'd deal with the epidemic of obesity in the west?

First, by West, you must mean US. There is no epidemic of obesity in Europe.

My solution is simple - the new "Can't catch it, can't eat it" policy. Worked for millions of years. Put it in place in stages.

Stage one is a ban on food delivery services. The morbidly obese will starve down to a weight where they can at least get into their cars and get to the drive thru.

Stage two is a ban on drive thrus, so people will starve down to a weight when they can actually get out of their cars and into the counter or grocery store to get their food.

Stage three is a weight limit on disabled parking passes. If you're so fat that you need a special parking permit to get to your food, you'll starve down to a weight where you can at least hobble in to get your food.

Stage four is a ban on any personal scooters or electric wheelchairs that can support more than 250 lbs. If you're too fat to propel yourself, you'll starve down to a weight where you can at least stand up on your own.

Stage five is the big one - the doors of any food retailer will no longer be allowed to be any wider than 20". Then people will at least starve down to a size where they can fit through the door.

See? Piece of cake. Er....