St. Gallen, 6 August 2012. “Urban Mining, Challenges and Opportunities for Africa” is the title of an ADF pre-event which the WRF Secretariat organises in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on October 22, 2012. Inappropriate disposal of e-waste not only leads to significant environmental problems but also to a systematic loss of secondary valuable materials. These materials are accumulating as “urban mines” in the form of obsolete consumer products. We will discuss these issues with a focus on synergies between Africa’s primary mining industry and opportunities given by secondary materials from e-waste.

The African Development Forum (ADF) is a flagship biennial event established by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UN ECA) in 1999 as a multi – stakeholder platform for debating, discussing and initiating concrete strategies for Africa’s development. It is convened in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and other key partners to establish an African-driven development agenda that reflects consensus and leads to specific programs for implementation.

The event is organised by the World Resources Forum, and supported by Empa, the Swiss interdisciplinary research and services institution for material sciences and technology development and Hewlett-Packard, (HP), the world’s largest technology company for solutions in printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure.

Download the preliminary workshop outline here and check the latest agenda.

Feel free to contact Marcela Mogilska (marcela.mogilska@worldresourcesforum.org or info@worldresourcesforum.org) or Daniel Ott (daniel.ott@empa.ch.