Paper short abstract:

Ghana's scrap markets exemplify urban mining. Through a range of intermediaries, Ghana's scrap dealers connect to smelters and refineries in the country and abroad. The paper explores visions of metal circularity, their corporate realisations, and Ghanaian scrap dealers' global attachments.

Paper long abstract:

Ghana's scrap markets exemplify urban mining in that they connect waste streams to metal supply chains. With origins in Muslim savannah networks and laced with stories of rags-to-riches opportunity, the economies are largely self-organised but relying on international gatekeepers or intermediaries that connect the country's scrap to smelters and refineries around the world. These often invisible forms of scrap globalisation that bridge different entrepreneurs and economic logics have assumed new importance in recent years as media attention decries Ghana's e-waste toxicity and German-development is sponsoring a multi-million euro intervention in the country's scrap sector.

The paper teases out visions and practices of circular economy as a governmental technology, an international entrepreneurial spirit, and a community business in Ghana. Based on 12 months of research with Ghana's scrap dealers, international scrap buying companies, and auxiliary governmental actors, the paper reveals the stakes of defining circularity as a specific material transformation, circulation as a geography of trade, and an economy as a social domain of exchange.