Cooper Fellow Lecture by Professor Richard Grant: "Agbogbloshie, Ghana: Truth, Myth, and the Making of a Global E-Waste Story"

How did an informal settlement in Accra, Ghana, become one of the world's most famous urban spaces? Despite generating hundreds of scholarly publications, Agbogbloshie remains widely misunderstood. Over the past two decades, it has become an academic urban legend, where claims about e-waste, environmental degradation, and urban informality gain authority through repetition rather than historical scrutiny.