By Joyce Gyekye
As Pollution Returns to Agbogbloshie, the Metropolitan Assembly and Nearby Communities Take Action in What Experts Say Could Be a Model For Cleaning Toxic Air Across the Country.
OLD FADAMA, Accra – In 2021, government cleared the Agbogbloshie e-waste site, once condemned as one of the world’s most toxic places. But four years later, the scrap dealers are back, and nearby communities like this one, are battling a resurgence of air pollution related illnesses.
On a recent afternoon, “trotro” and “aboboya” tricycles carting food and goods between Agbogbloshie and Accra central market clogged the single-lane Salaga road, hemmed in by market stalls, trucks, and pedestrians, forcing vehicles to crawl.
A right turn after the onion market opens onto Old Fadama, a community pressed between the vast Agogbloshie site and Korle Lagoon, and home to tens of thousands of people. Here, pollution is not an abstract statistic—it is the air that children, mothers and workers breathe all day every day.
Mohammed Bashiru, a community leader, says the pollution is relentless.
“Day in, and day out, the activities that we do in the community that amount to air pollution doesn’t have a specific time. The emissions or the movement of vehicles and the smoke from the dump site at the Agbogbloshie area.”
The community has buckled under the weight of pollution related illnesses – diabetes, heart disease, respiratory and lung conditions and cancer are rising. They know the cause.
“We were told in one of our meetings that the air here contains diseases and we should take care of our family, so when we see smoke from Agbogbloshie, we run into our rooms,” says Abdulai Mumuni, the Zamrama chief of Old Fadama, translated from pidgin English.
In 2024 with the help of Peoples’ Dialogue on Human Settlement, an African civil society organization, and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, the community decided to take matters into their own hands.
Bashiru, a member of the Ghana Federation of Urban Poor, trained as a “citizen scientist” and worked with the community to measure the air. Over the next year, community members wore low-cost air quality sensors that tracked the pollution.
The results were alarming: high levels of “PM2.5” – the smallest and most dangerous pollution particles – were far above what the World Health Organisation says is safe.
“If you do a measuring of pm 2.5 air pollution you realize that you’re recording 200 micrograms,” says Dr Elvis Kyere-Gyeabour, portfolio manager of Breathe Cities Accra, a nonprofit organization working to clean Accra’s air. “It means you’re almost times five more than what the EPA says and almost 10 times the W.H.O levels.”
The data has now been incorporated in the Accra Metropolitan Assembly Air Quality Action Plan for 2026-2030. Florence Kuukyi, director of the Assembly’s Public Health Department, says having the data has been an essential first step in taking action.
“With that document submitted to the Assembly, the assembly will use that to develop strategies to impact on the place to ensure that we reduce air pollution,” Kuukyi says.
For community leaders, having the data has been helpful in confronting the polluters. Young people and those who depend on the polluting activities for their livelihoods have been resistant to doing anything that would limit their income.
Mumuni says the data now shows everyone how it was impacting their health.
“The tires they burn as well as the cables from old electronics. They sometimes come into the community to worry us and because it would lead to a fight and since we don’t want to engage in any fight, we have to be patient and manage how we can stay in this area,” he says.
Experts say the project should now be rolled out to communities across the country as air pollution gets worse with growing health implications. The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution caused eight million deaths worldwide in 2021. In Ghana, air pollution-related illnesses claimed about 32,500 lives prematurely in 2023 according to the most recent Global State of the Air report, making it one of the country’s leading killers.
Informal settlements like Old Fadama, carry an especially high burden due to burning of household waste, firewood for cooking household food and for selling as well as pollution from heavy traffic. But the area is also covered by the toxic waste coming from the e-waste site. Data has shown that the settlement and adjourning communities including Kaneshie, Adabraka, and Kwame Nkrumah Circle are among the air-polluted hotspots in Greater Accra.
That has severe impacts on vulnerable groups such as the elderly and pregnant and lactating mothers.
“A woman is pregnant and then she’s inhaling a lot of fumes – especially if this happens in the first trimester – she may have a malformed baby leading to continuous abortions or continuous loss of pregnancies,” says Dr Louisa Ademki Matey, a public health physician and Metropolitan Director of the Ghana Health Service.
She also highlighted the dangers to children whose smaller organs mean they are exposed to higher concentrations of pollutants. “Some of these children have their eyes looking brown as they also get a lot of allergies. The growth of such children are affected, even their performance.”
Dr Matey says the cost of air pollution on logistics, equipment, and even human resources is staggering.
“Upper respiratory tract infections in 2020 were the topmost reason why people come into our OPDs [outpatient departments]. And over the years, more and more people are coming down with pneumonia, asthma and things like that.”
“Accra could save $260 million or 20 percent of the national health budget between now and 2040 by cleaning up the air,” says Dr Matey, Metropolitan Director of the Ghana Health Service.
For now the Assembly and Old Fadama are working together to see how they can use their new knowledge to make the most of limited resources. One of the recommendations by the community is a solution to biomass fuel like wood and charcoal – one of the biggest polluters – for cooking.
“The Assembly is working with engineers into this space,“ says Kuukyi. “At a June 4th Market as one of the places they burn used clothing to heat water, a biogas system has been built for them. So these are some of the measures the Assembly is putting in place.”
In the meantime experts are urging the community to do what they can to protect themselves: wear N95 nose masks, seal up windows where possible and keep vulnerable people like children, the elderly and pregnant women away from direct exposure to cooking fuels, vehicle exhaust and waste burning as much as possible. Those who are already suffering with air pollution related illnesses may need to move away in order to survive.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Clean Air Reporting Project. Funds were provided by the Clean Air Fund. The donor had no say in the story’s content.
