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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.'"

7 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Re:News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    They're starving because they are hopeless niggers who barely ooga-chaka pointy sticks through zebras.

  2. Re:News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    The problem is, those guys are completely useless. If they actually worked instead of killing each other their countries wouldn't be the shitholes they are today. It's all their fault and I don't see any reason why we should waste time and money helping them.

    Glass

  3. Re:News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Typically I'd disagree and say you're just racist, but frankly, these people have had centuries to get their act together and they've failed. Whereas white colonies in the same areas have flourished.

  4. Re:The real problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    the problem in Africa is that it is filled with Africans.

    When they are hungry, they steal. When they are satiated, they fornicate. What discipline they know is under the threat of a whip or imminent death.

  5. More lying propaganda from monopolists & toadi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Yep, this one won't get a score, but it will be the truth. The real reason for the campaign against exporting used computers to Africa is to preserve microsoft's monopoly, and to force the sale of Vista to poor Africans under the red herring of 'saving the environment'. Africa is HUGE. Just the Peoples Republic of the Congo is the size of the continental United States! A few computers would be so lost as to disappear! Not sending used computers to such a place that needs them is tantamount to the account of the dumping of milk in Los Angeles harbor during the great depression in the sight of hungry and starving unemployed 'just to uphold the price'...John Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath". Does the world have any decency left? Just how deeply have we as a species silently sold our souls to the filthy purveyors of copyrights?

  6. Re:meanwhile, back here in the U.S.A. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Since you foe'd me, I signed you up for some nice emails. Spelling out emails doesnt solve human parsing... only bots.

    Enjoy.

  7. Re:News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    What a brilliant response!
    "Die a slow, slow death you piece of shit."

    Africa is a third world hellhole because of the PEOPLE who live there, nothing else. Africans existed for millenia before WHITE people existed, so they've had MILLENIA to reach the stage that white people have, yet they haven't done this. And you know why, as well as I do - their average IQ is 70. They are selfish, hate-filled people. (Just look at the everyday atrocities committed all over Africa. Just look at Zimbabwe, South Africa, Haiti, Ethiopia, etc.etc.)

    Any response, 'comrade'?