Ghanaian Hustle by Yepoka Yeebo

April 17, 2015 1:41 PM

This is Suame Magazine. A vast, open-air industrial district in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. Here, 200,000 skilled workers manufacture everything from bolts to tanker trucks by hand. A million dollars passes through the factories and workshops here every day, and it’s the place where most of the country’s laborers learn their trades: the heart of Ghana’s informal economy.

Photos and Story
posted by infini (25 comments total)

Interesting, thanks. It sounds like something from a Wm. Gibson novel.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:44 PM on April 17, 2015

Agreed. This was great. Wish it was longer.
posted by mosschief at 5:48 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

The car they mention in the article is actually really cool.
posted by mosschief at 6:01 PM on April 17, 2015

Man, would I love to visit that place. What a trip. I'm hoping the maker movement in the States will morph into something capable of even just a fraction of this.

The thing about automobile computerization bums me out, too:

American cars have too many electronics, and nobody knows what to do with them. Which, in Apomasu’s opinion, is the biggest problem. “Now cars have moved from manual to computers, which we can’t maintain,” Apomasu says. So in a few years, most mechanics at Suame Magazine won’t be able to fix modern vehicles: “If we don’t take care, Suame is going to collapse.”

posted by mondo dentro at 6:21 PM on April 17, 2015

mosschief: "Agreed. This was great. Wish it was longer."

Another vote for wish it was longer. Great photos and interesting reading.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:15 PM on April 17, 2015

I'm hoping the maker movement in the States will morph into something capable of even just a fraction of this.

If only it were possible to keep the good parts and avoid the problems of underpaid workers, lack of opportunities, and dysfunctional public sector.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:52 PM on April 17, 2015

People are smart.
posted by Keith Talent at 10:47 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nice surprise seeing Roads & Kingdoms on the MetaFilter homepage! I work on the site and shared the launch of our new Breakfast & Drinks section to MeFi Projects a few weeks ago. Thanks for the shares & support.
posted by c95008 at 12:17 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

c95008 thank you for this piece. I felt the same way once when adamvasco shared a now defunct posterous on the topic. The quality of photographs and the writing in this piece just made my heart soar. I love this topic. The creativity involved in re-use, re-purpose, of scarce materials in order to build something new is just energizingly amazing. I've had the luck to be able to go around Kenya's informal manufacturing industry to look at innovation under conditions of scarcity and dream of visiting Kumasi one day.
posted by infini at 2:43 AM on April 18, 2015

avoid the problems of underpaid workers, lack of opportunities, and dysfunctional public sector

Other than in Germany or the Nordic nations, is there really another place in the world where this problem isn't endemic?
posted by infini at 2:45 AM on April 18, 2015

My dream trip to document and write on is to travel with an informal trader flying from an African city to Guangzhou to purchase goods for eventual sale back home.
posted by infini at 2:48 AM on April 18, 2015

[Modern] cars have too many electronics, and nobody knows what to do with them. Which, in Apomasu’s opinion, is the biggest problem. “Now cars have moved from manual to computers, which we can’t maintain,” Apomasu says.

I suspect that this isn't a terminal issue. Replacement car electronics are on Ali Express nowadays, and I can imagine an awful lot of ingenuity being brought to bear on this.
posted by ambrosen at 4:24 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

A fascinating piece, and props for including the author's name!
posted by languagehat at 8:27 AM on April 18, 2015

A longer piece by Yeebo is "The Bridge to Sodom and Gomorrah," which focuses on a particular slum in Accra.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:04 AM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thank you panjandrum. The author's style makes my heart sing and feels like a slight wind on the embers covered in ash that were once the sparks of words dancing to the music of their rhythm beneath my fingertips on the keyboard.
posted by infini at 11:46 AM on April 18, 2015

infini: I wanted to clarify, the words & photography for this article are by Yepoka Yeebo.

A longtime design collaborator and I work on the site design & development. So all the accolades Roads & Kingdoms is stacking up for its content has nothing to do with me! :) I'm just happy to see the writers, editors and photographers get their work out there and appreciated.
posted by c95008 at 11:49 AM on April 18, 2015

In the "olden days," people repaired things instead of immediately replacing them and they put old things to work again in a different way; it was considered responsible and respectable to do so. Then things changed and we hit the post-war economic boom and we bought new things - as many as we could. Then the "hippie" era of the 60s hit with the back-to-the-land/live simply and leave a small footprint - the Mother Earth era - but the appeal of that idea was limited and most people carried on cherishing the new things and discarding the old. Meantime our factories and manufacturing companies dropped out of this country and out of the towns and cities that had relied on them for jobs - and we became a place where we buy things - lots of cheap junk, really - mostly made in other countries; we don't even think about repairing much of anything anymore (when is the last time you heard of a car involved in a traffic accident that wasn't "totalled" by the insurance company?)

Anyway, the next time I feel proud of myself for reusing something instead of throwing it away, I hope someone reminds me of the way these people live and WORK and grind away to build themselves a country by their hands alone, using the castoffs of a throw-away society like ours.
posted by aryma at 10:35 PM on April 19, 2015

The United States and China contributed most to record mountains of electronic waste such as cellphones, hair dryers and fridges in 2014 and less than a sixth ended up recycled worldwide, a U.N. study said on Sunday.

Overall, 41.8 million tonnes of "e-waste" - defined as any device with an electric cord or battery - were dumped around the globe in 2014 and only an estimated 6.5 million tonnes were taken for recycling, the United Nations University (UNU) said.

Of the 41.8 million tons, or megatons, of e-waste thrown away in 2014, about 60 percent include:

• 12.8 megatons of small equipment (vacuum cleaners, microwaves, toasters, electric shavers, video cameras, etc.)
• 11.8 megatons of large equipment (washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, electric stoves, photovoltaic panels, etc.)
• 7.0 megatons of cooling and freezing equipment (temperature exchange equipment)
• 6.3 megatons of screens
• 3.0 megatons of small IT (mobile phones, pocket calculators, personal computers, printers, etc.)
• 1.0 megatons of lamps

"The 41.8 megatons weight of last year's e-waste is comparable to that of 1.15 million 40-ton 18-wheel trucks -- enough to form a line of trucks 23,000 kilometers long, or the distance from New York to Tokyo and back," the report states
posted by infini at 1:48 AM on April 20, 2015

Seconding Panjandrum's recommendation for "The Bridge to Sodom and Gomorrah". Ms. Yeebo is a gifted journalist.
posted by ReginaHart at 7:09 PM on April 20, 2015

Oh, and thanks to Infini for the introduction to Roads & Kingdoms. My Feedly overfloweth.
posted by ReginaHart at 7:13 PM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

My dream trip to document and write on is to travel with an informal trader flying from an African city to Guangzhou to purchase goods for eventual sale back home.

I would love to read that, if you ever take that trip. I assume you have seen this New Yorker article about "Guangzhou’s Canaan market and the rise of an African merchant class"?
posted by Dip Flash at 7:37 PM on April 20, 2015

Not that one, Dip Flash, but most of them and a bunch of academic articles. given the proliferation of interest in the past couple of years, I'd now have to relook and see if there's any angle left that hasn't been covered
posted by infini at 2:08 AM on April 21, 2015

the economist drones over africa...
Technology in Africa: The pioneering continent - "Innovation is increasingly local"[1,2,3]
posted by kliuless at 10:28 AM on April 30, 2015

Yes but insists on using obsolete image of Maasai in traditional clothes ("African") using phone to demonstrate how pioneering it is instead of one of the tech hubs, startup incubators or fablabs popping up all over the place.

/end pissed off rant at continued undermining with imagery contradicting text by MSM
posted by infini at 10:34 AM on April 30, 2015

I'm quite tempted to mock up a copy of a news site where every photo illustrating news articles set in rich world countries is substituted with photos of people in that country's folk costume, and every photo from the rest of the world contains only photos of people in their respective culture's business casual wear.
posted by ambrosen at 7:41 PM on May 1, 2015 [1 favorite]