International multiple-award winning online publication ITREALMS Media has announced it will host its 2020 Electronic Waste (e-Waste) Dialogue in Lagos on Thursday, December 17 at Welcome Centre Hotels along International Airport Road.
The dialogue will be themed: ‘e-Waste in Nigeria: Challenges and Opportunities.’
Disclosing this, editor-in-chief of ITREALMS Media Inc., publishers of ITREALMS Online, Remmy Nweke, said that this has become imperative as the electronics waste being generated in the country have continued to grow.
The 2020 ITREALMS e-Waste dialogue, he said, would examine Nigeria’s burden with regards to the waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) coming from the likes of mobile phones, computers, TV sets, and fridges among other electronic devices.
“This kind of waste has become one of the fastest growing waste streams across the globe,” he said.
Mr Nweke pointed out that this burden estimated at 1.1 million tonnes of e-waste annually arising from both local and imported electrical and electronic equipment (EEE).
He cited, for instance, that the United Nations Environmental Protection (UNEP) reported in 2015 that Nigeria had 56,000 tonnes of imported e-waste; in 2017, this figure increased to 288,000 tonnes; over four times higher than two years earlier.
He stressed that as of July 2020, Nigeria had 285,259,320 connected lines with some 198,961,361 active and 151,063,413 active internet data subscriptions across all the Nigerian mobile network operators by technology.
This, Nweke said, is expected to grow into million tonnes of e-waste of mobile devices by end of 2021, aside the fairly used imported devices meant for cushioning digital divide.
The dialogue will be held in commemoration of the International e-Waste Day (IeWD) 2020. Experts from the nation’s telecom apex body Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) among others have been gearing up for the event.
The dialogue was initially scheduled for October 14 but was rescheduled due to COVID-19 restrictions and #EndSARS protest nationwide.
Nweke equally invited industry stakeholders to come and share knowledge on best practices on e-Waste management in the country by examining the challenges and opportunities.
The dialogue, he said, would be held face-to-face in compliance with COVID-19 protocol, even as there are plans to simultaneously host the event virtually here.
