Carmignac Photojournalism Award
13th edition
"E-WASTE IN GHANA"

Laureates: a collaborative reportage by Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Muntaka Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen

The 13th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to Ghana and the ecological and human challenges associated with the transboundary flow of electronic waste. The award was granted to a team made up of investigative anti-corruption journalist and activist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and photojournalists Muntaka Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen (NOOR).

The laureates will be officially announced and their work unveiled at the Visa pour l'Image festival on September 7, 2023 at 9:30 pm (GMT), followed by a round table discussion on September 8 at 11 am (GMT).

In 2019, the world generated 53.6 million tons of electronic waste (e-waste), marking a 21% increase in five years. This makes discarded smartphones, tablets, computers, and other electronics not only one of the largest sources of global waste but also incredibly valuable (containing precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum group metals). If this trend continues, in the absence of sustainable recycling or repair solutions, global electronic waste will reach 74 million metric tons by 2030. In 2019, only 17.4 % of the 53.6 million tons of e-waste were collected and recycled in a dedicated channel.

Having long invaded Asia, Europe and the United States are now shipping industrial quantities of e-waste to West African countries like Ghana, in violation of international treaties. Ghana, known for political stability, now faces a proliferation of informal open-air landfill sites near homes, following the dismantling of the Agbogbloshie scrapyard in July 2021.

It was against this backdrop that began the investigation by Anas Aremeyaw Anas and photojournalists Muntaka Chasant and Bénédicte Kurzen, which combines photography, video, audio recordings and writing. Departing from the dramatic imagery often used by the media to portray Ghana as "the dustbin of the world", they spent six months documenting this incredibly ambiguous and complex ecosystem, which is both a crucial economic opportunity for thousands of people in Ghana and has a considerable human and environmental impact. Together, combining a national and international approach, the team studied the ramifications of e-waste trafficking between Europe and Ghana, revealing the opacity of this globalised cycle.

Delving into the complex world of second-hand electronics in Ghana and Europe, Bénédicte Kurzen documented the e-waste flows and the communities that activate them, challenging negative stereotypes of exporters and highlighting the inefficiency of European e-waste bureaucracy. At the other end of the chain, in Accra, the capital of Ghana, researcher and documentary photographer Muntaka Chasant immersed himself in a sociological analysis of this economy on which many communities depend. With precision, he analyses the social groups of e-waste workers, revealing a hierarchical organisation and the mechanisms of migration from northeast Ghana. With his team, Anas Aremeyaw Anas infiltrated the ports of Accra to reveal the legal and illegal flows of e-waste. Working undercover and using trackers implanted in illegal waste, he unmasked the strategies and corruption that enable people to circumvent the law, both in Europe and in Ghana.

The 13th Carmignac Photojournalism Award will be exhibited in Paris and New York in 2023-2024 and will be the subject of a monograph, co-published by the Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Éditions.

The jury
Dr Kees Baldé - Senior Scientific Specialist, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)
Fabiola Ferrero - Photojournalist, laureate of the 12th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award
Vera Kwakofi - Senior News Editor, Commissioning with the BBC World Service, responsible for the BBC's International TV Operations in Africa
Lars Lindemann - Independent curator
Azu Nwagbogu - Independant curator, Director and Founder of African Artists’ Foundation and Lagos Photo Festival
Alona Pardo - Curator, Barbican Art Gallery

The pre-jury
Fiona Shields - Director of Photography, The Guardian
Mikko Takkunen - Photo Editor International, The New York Times
Marta Weiss - Senior Curator, Photography Victoria & Albert Museum

Fondation Carmignac
The Fondation Carmignac was founded in 2000 by Edouard Carmignac, a French entrepreneur, CEO and Chairman of asset management company Carmignac. Today, it is structured around three main pillars which developed one after the other. The Carmignac Collection, which has over 300 works of contemporary art, the Carmignac Photojournalism Award and the Villa Carmignac in Porquerolles which offers temporary exhibitions and a rich cultural programme in a 2000-square-meter art space set in a 15-hectare estate at the heart of a protected site.

More information: fondationcarmignac.com

The Carmignac Photojournalism Award
In 2009, while media and photojournalism faced an unprecedented crisis, Edouard Carmignac created the Carmignac Photojournalism Award to support photographers in the field. Every year, it funds the production of an investigative photo reportage on human rights violations and geo-strategic issues in the world. The Fondation Carmignac provides the laureate with financial and human resources to carry out their project and produces both a monograph and a traveling exhibition, aiming to shed light on the crises and challenges which the contemporary world is facing. Previous editions of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award have focused on: Gaza (Kai Wiedenhöfer); Pachtunistan (Massimo Berruti); Zimbabwe (Robin Hammond); Chechnya (Davide Monteleone); Iran (Newsha Tavakolian); Guyana (Christophe Gin); Libya (Narciso Contreras); Nepal (Lizzie Sadin); the Arctic (Kadir van Lohuizen and Yuri Kozyrev); the Amazon (Tommaso Protti), the Democratic Republic of Congo (Finbarr O’Reilly and the collective of photographers for the project "Congo in Conversation") and Venezuela (Fabiola Ferrero).

More information: fondationcarmignac.com/en/photojournalism-award