Cotonou, Benin (CNN) — Standing on the stony ground in Fifa Park’s bustling parking lot, Rokeeb Yaya haggles over the price of a dark red car. He is one of two hundred vehicles parked in long lines that stretch across the vast parking lot, some shiny and new, others dented and dusty.
The car Yaya is interested in, a US-made 2008 Ford Escape, is for sale for about $4,000. He’s relatively affordable — American cars are cheaper than most other makes on the lot — and he wants to trade his bike for a car. He’s not interested in the vehicle’s history, he says, just that he can afford it.
But the fact that this Ford ended up here — in one of the biggest parking lots in the port city of Cotonou — helps explain how many of Western’s gas-guzzling cars start a second life in West Africa.
The 14-year-old Ford arrived in Benin from the United States last year after being sold at a car auction.
Records reviewed by CNN show that it had three previous owners in Virginia and Maryland, and that it has driven more than 252,000 miles (405,554 km). It had a previous recall for its power steering, but unlike the other cars on the lot, it arrived in relatively good shape—accident-free.
This old SUV is just one of the millions of used vehicles that arrive each year in West Africa from wealthy countries like Japan, South Korea, European countries and, increasingly, the United States. Many of them end up in Benin, one of the Africa’s leading used car importers.
Boats in the autonomous port of Cotonou, in Benin, West Africa. Cars arrive here from Western countries, including the United States. (Credit: Prosper Dagnitche/AFP/Getty Images)
The flow of used cars arriving at West African ports is expected to increase with the West’s shift to electric vehicles. As rich countries set aggressive targets for consumers to switch to electric vehicles to cut planet-warming pollution, gasoline-powered vehicles won’t necessarily go away.
Instead, many will be shipped thousands of miles away, to developing countries like Benin, where the population is growing along with the demand for used cars.
Experts affirm that the effect will be to divert climate and environmental problems towards the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, by undermining their own attempts to reduce planet-warming pollution.
explosive demand
The global market for used light vehicles grew by almost 20% from 2015 to 2019, when they were exported more than 4.8 million. There was a slight decline in exports in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, but the numbers are now “growing quite fast,” Rob de Jong, an official with the United Nations Environment Program, told CNN.
The US exports about 18% of the world’s used vehicles, according to UNEP data. These travel all over the planet, including the Middle East and Central America, but many end up in Nigeria, Benin and Ghana.
Some of them are cars recovered from accidents, floods or simply too old, which are auctioned for parts. Others are entire used cars that American dealers want to sell.
An imported car that suffered an accident is pending repair. (Credit: Nimi Princewill/CNN)
“A lot of them will be Hyundais, Toyotas and sedans between two and five years old,” explains Dmitriy Shibarshin, director of marketing for West Coast Shipping, a company specializing in international car transport. “It’s mostly the inexpensive vehicles that are sent there.”
Shibarshin’s company and others are “like FedEx” for cars, he said. His company usually specializes in high-end vehicles, but also ships cheaper cars.
In major African countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, more than 90% of cars and trucks are used vehicles from abroad. In Kenya, where De Jong is based, the car park has doubled every eight years; streets that were previously devoid of cars are now choked with traffic, he said.
There is a huge appetite for these used vehicles. “We have a very young population that is getting richer every day,” says Etop Ipke, CEO of Autochek Africa, an online car marketplace. “The first thing they want, as they can afford things, is some mobility,” he said.
But unlike in the United States, few prospective buyers have access to credit, so new cars are often out of reach.
“That’s fundamentally the reason we’re not able to improve the quality” of the cars sold, Ipke said. “It’s not that people want to drive used cars; it’s an affordability issue.”
Experts say that the demand for used cars could soar further as the adoption of electric cars in the West increases the supply of used vehicles in African countries. Nearly one in five vehicles sold globally this year will be electric, according to the International Energy Agencycompared to less than 5% in 2020. China, Europe and the United States lead the market for electric vehicles, according to the agency.
In states like New York and Florida, where consumers are buying more electric vehicles, dealers are increasingly looking abroad for a place to sell their older gas-powered models, according to Matt Trapp, a regional vice president at huge auto auction company Manheim. .
These states also have established ports, making them the ideal place to ship used cars to Africa. “It’s creating a really complementary dynamic,” Trapp told CNN.
“I’m not surprised to see how strong exporting is becoming,” says Trapp. “We are going to see this dynamic more and more. When [los distribuidores de automóviles] see demand in other markets, they will find a way to move the metal there.”
From UNEP’s point of view, not all fuel cars are a concern, but older ones, which tend to pollute more and be less safe, De Jong said. There is evidence that the growing demand for vehicles in Africa is causing more old and salvaged cars to be shipped to the continent than 20 years ago.
“What we see right now is a wide variety of used vehicles being exported from the North to the South,” says De Jong. “Not only does the number increase, but the quality decreases.”
“Polluting or unsafe”
In a section of Fifa Park, CNN finds a 16-year-old Dodge Charger, worn from age.
“We just sold it for 3 million CFA francs [unos US$ 4.500]”, says its seller, who does not wish to be identified, about the vehicle that arrived in Benin from the United States two years ago.
Parked in front of the Charger is a 24-year-old Ford Winstar that arrived in Benin from the US last year. It’s a cheaper alternative for low-income car buyers who can’t afford newer models.
Car dealer Abdul Koura said American and Canadian cars are highly desirable to importers, who often bring in cars that have been in accidents, he told CNN.
“They repair these cars and resell them for a profit,” said Koura, whose space at Cotonou’s Fifa park includes more than 30 used vehicles imported from Canada.
Abdul Koura is a car salesman at Fifa Park. (Credit: Nimi Princewill/CNN)
Victor Ojoh, a Nigerian car salesman who frequents Fifa Park, told CNN that you can often tell where a car came from by what’s wrong with it.
“The cars that smoke are mostly coming from the United States,” Ojoh explains. “The ones coming from Canada are mostly flooded cars starting to develop electrical faults.”
Some imported vehicles are missing catalytic converters, exhaust emission control devices that filter out toxic gases. The catalysts contain valuable metalsincluding platinum, and can reach $100 on the black market. Some of the cars are shipped without catalytic converters or are picked up by dealers upon arrival, Ojo explained.
Millions of cars shipped to Africa and Asia from the United States, Europe and Japan are “polluting or unsafe” according to UNEP. “Often with faulty or missing components, they spew toxic fumes, increase air pollution and hinder efforts to fight climate change.”
Regulations aimed at reducing pollution and increasing the safety of imported cars in West Africa tend to be weak. But recently attempts have been made to harden them.
In 2020, Benin and 14 other members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed to a series of regulations on vehicle emissions in the region, which include a 10-year age limit for used vehicles and limits on the amount of carbon pollution cars can produce.
But the extent to which they are strictly enforced is unknown.
Rows of used cars at Fifa Park. (Credit: Nimi Princewill/CNN)
UNEP officials, including De Jong, are also in talks with US and EU officials about introducing new regulations that would crack down on shipping very old or junk cars to developing countries. These talks are in their initial phase and have not yet resulted in any compromise.
Still, de Jong said climate change and global emissions make the conversation around used cars “a different ballgame.” The increase in shipments of older and more polluting cars is a problem for both developed and developing countries through which they circulate, he added.
“Today, with climate change, it doesn’t matter where the emissions are,” de Jong said. “Whether it’s in the city of Washington or in Lagos, it doesn’t matter.”
Ipke doesn’t think it’s inevitable that Africa will accept all the old gasoline cars the West no longer wants. He hopes that the transition to electric vehicles will also reach the African continent, even if this requires a significant improvement in the charging infrastructure.
“As far as Africa is concerned, the transition shouldn’t necessarily be from used cars to new combustion engines, but from used cars to electric vehicles,” says Ipke. “I think the continent has to be ready for EVs, used or brand new, because that’s the direction the world is heading.”
To Yaya, however, all of this seems so far away. What he brought to Fifa Park, and to the old Ford SUV, was the lack of other options.
“I can only buy what my money allows me,” he says.
Nimi Princewill from Benin, Ella Nilsen from Washington
