TechSalvage

The Inspiration: Stopping the Burn The world treats Africa as a graveyard for its old technology. Every year, devices used in the UK, the US, and Europe eventually find their way to Nigeria. We use them until they die, and then they become a crisis. Nigeria generates over 500,000 metric tons of electronic waste annually. As an electrical engineering student, I see this tragedy firsthand.

I realized that everyone I know—myself included—has a "graveyard drawer" full of old phones and laptops. We don't keep them because we are hoarders; we keep them because we are afraid. We fear data theft if we sell them, and we fear the guilt of throwing them away. So, when they finally do leave our homes, they often end up in the hands of informal scavengers who burn them in open pits to harvest copper. This releases mercury and lead into the air we breathe and the water we drink. I built TechSalvage because I refused to accept that poisoning our community is the only way to dispose of a phone.

What It Does TechSalvage is Nigeria’s first circular economy engine. We built a bridge that turns the toxic micro-landfills in our homes into a verified supply chain for the repair economy.

For individuals, we provide a secure, transparent way to dispose of devices. Users can instantly value their dormant tech using our AI-driven pricing tool. Crucially, we solved the "Trust Barrier" by integrating a certified Data Destruction Guarantee, ensuring that privacy is never compromised. We gamified the experience to drive behavioral change: users can choose to get cash or donate their proceeds to STEM education, earning a "Climate Guardian" badge that quantifies their specific carbon offset.

For the industry, we created a B2B Marketplace. Instead of crushing these devices, we harvest the high-value working components—screens, chips, logic boards—and index them for repair engineers. This eliminates the "scavenger hunt" for genuine parts and ensures that only the truly non-functional waste is routed to certified smelters.

How We Built It We approached this problem with a philosophy of "Industrial Elegance." We knew that to compete with the informal market, we needed to exude absolute trust. We built the platform using Bolt.new to rapidly iterate on the dual-sided logic (Seller vs. Buyer flows). The frontend is built with React for responsiveness, featuring real-time state management to handle the "Instant Quote" logic. We focused heavily on the UX of the "Seller Wizard," creating a friction-free flow that takes a user from "Dormant Device" to "Booked Drop-off" in under 60 seconds.

Challenges We Faced The biggest challenge was psychological, not technical. Our initial research revealed that the #1 barrier to recycling wasn't convenience—it was Fear. People were terrified of their banking apps or private photos being recovered from sold devices. We had to pivot our entire messaging and feature set to prioritize "Data Security" as the core product offering, with the financial/environmental incentive as a secondary benefit. Additionally, balancing the unit economics of "Harvesting" (Reuse) versus "Recycling" (Scrap) required deep thinking to ensure the business model remains sustainable without relying solely on grants.

What We Learned We learned that waste is a design flaw. The "trash" burning in landfills is actually dormant capital—billions of Naira in gold, copper, and silicon that is being destroyed instead of recovered. We learned that the average Nigerian wants to do the right thing; they just lack the infrastructure to do it safely. TechSalvage is that infrastructure. We are proving that you can stop the burn, secure the data, and fuel a billion-dollar repair economy all at once.

Built With

• javascript
• lucide
• react
• tailwindcss
• vite