An acrid haze hung over a sprawling dump in Ghana’s capital, Accra, as excavators gouged into mounds of smouldering rubbish.

Thin plumes of black smoke curled from burning plastic and rubber, mingling with the rank odour of stagnant lagoon water.

At Agbogbloshie, a district on the Korle Lagoon delta, thousands of tonnes of refuse have accumulated over decades, overwhelming the fragile wetlands overlooking a slum of around 80,000 residents, many of them migrants and traders.