One might best describe Lagos, Nigeria's Computer Village as a
harried community of electronics vendors, traders, scammers, and shoppers.
Shops pour out onto the street touting everything from fully built desktop
computers to stacks of scanners to mobile phone recharge cards, and there's a
steady flow of people, vehicles, and vendors choking the streets.
This is where office computer equipment goes to live a second
life. Used peripherals are piled waist high, with clouds of mice and cables
tangled up like bowls of spaghetti and meatballs. Clicky keyboards from 1992
sit next to laser keyboards from 2012, and laser printers are stacked on street
corners like firewood.
Everything is for sale, and everything should be haggled for. A
used 6" micro USB cable cost just under $3 after some back-and-forth while
a questionably new 8GB SD card ran around $24.
The village flourishes with streets packed
with shoppers. And like in any center of commerce, a secondary market has
developed as well. Corn, pineapple, and oranges are the favorites on the
streets here, as well as boiled peanuts and suya, West
Africa's version of shish kebab.
The result is a sprawling community several blocks square that
is an ecosystem of city life and electronic commerce.
what do you think of CNN
what do you think of CNN
previous article
Newer Post
No comments
Post a Comment