Part of their problem stems from the region quickly becoming the 'world's-toilet' for outdated machines. You know, the one's all the charity groups and church organizations decide need to go to Africa because they're eight years old and surely Africans need eight year-old computers. The fallacy of logic on both sides makes my head hurt. - Jon Gosier

Personally, I think a better measure would be to enforce a hefty tax on computers that don't meet a certain standard (say over six years old), and also stricter policies that would require local vendors to be used to support these machines (versus foreign contractors). I think this would curb the excessive dumping. Clearly, useful old-machines are a good thing as they are more affordable by more people. If the government wants to promote spending, then they should give tax credits to the companies that sell new computers, though I don't think that's a good idea. - Jon Gosier

The other side of stopping the import of old computers is that those lucky few with the rights to import *new* computers stand to make a fortune. The cynic in me says to take a second look at those who stand to profit the most from a ban like this. - Theresa Carpenter Sondjo

It turns out Green Computers (a joint effort between Microsoft and the UG govt) would be exempt. Essentially making them the only organization that could indeed still import used/refurbished computers. When called out on this, they claimed that they weren't aware but it does look incredibly unlikely. - Jon Gosier