One-armed bandits hit the savanna: Inside the Chinese-led gambling epidemic in rural Ghana
When the machines arrived last winter, the villagers were mesmerized. In Zamashegu, a farming community of 1,000 people in northern Ghana, they may as well have come from outer space — four electric slot machines installed in two roadside shacks, chirping and clattering, bathing the packed-dirt walls in a pale, kaleidoscopic glow. Their lure was magnetic. Soon, villagers stopped…