In January 2021, I met Jacob Yakubu Romanu in his blue-fronted shop on the main street of Ħamrun. At the time, his story already felt improbable: a young man who had arrived in Malta by boat in 2007, passed through Ħal Safi’s detention centre, and slowly built a business out of a broken television set.

Six years on, Jacob’s Technician is still there - brighter, fuller, and louder with the hum of charging cables and the flicker of repaired screens.

“I’m still doing very, very good,” he tells me now, standing behind a glass counter lined with second-hand laptops, phone cases, chargers and carefully stacked televisions.

Mr Romanu’s journey into electronics began inside the detention centre. A friend’s TV stopped working. He tried to fix it. It worked. Word spread. Soon, he was travelling across Malta, helping Armed Forces of Malta soldiers and others with odd repairs, earning a reputation as “the Togolese technician.” Eventually, he moved from informal jobs to a physical shop in Ħamrun, supported by Malta Microfinance when traditional banks were out of reach.

Today, his shop has been open for nine years.

But while the business remains steady, the repair culture that once sustained him is changing.

“Regarding the repairs,” he says candidly, “the price of new items is more affordable now, and repairs are not worth to repair.”

He explains that for many household electronics - TVs, hi-fi systems - customers increasingly choose replacement over repair. Cheap imports and fast production cycles mean that fixing a broken screen can cost nearly as much as buying a new one.

“In my opinion it is not worth for people to repair, for example some TVs or hi-fi systems,” he says.

In other words, devices have become more disposable. Where once a television might have been repaired two or three times over its lifetime, now it is often discarded. That being said, repairs have not disappeared entirely. They’ve simply become more personal.

“With mobile phones,” Mr Romanu explains, “because of the data of the people, it’s worth repairing.”

Photos. Contacts. Messages. Banking apps - phones can be an indispensable archive of someone’s life. Customers are willing to pay to save what cannot be replaced.

There is also sentiment.

He tells me about a customer who brought in an old radio – so old that parts are no longer available locally. Mr Romanu is determined to fix it anyway. He plans to source components from Africa.

For him, repair can be about memory, attachment, continuity.

In many ways, Mr Romanu own life mirrors that ethos: repair, rebuild, continue.

Back in 2021, he spoke about living in limbo, hoping for more permanent residency after more than a decade in Malta. Today, his focus is firmly on stability and expansion.

“Regarding the future,” he says, “I am looking forward to see if my SRA residence permit may extend to long-term residence or citizenship, so I will have more time to invest more in my business. For example, opening more shops, buying my own house, and going abroad for importation and export to expand more in my business.”

Mr Romanu has been able to build success despite the odds. However, he is still in institutional limbo without long-term residency, which would give him access to some more basic rights that citizens take for granted.

Security for him is not abstract. It is practical. It means the ability to invest without fear. To travel for trade. To import goods directly. To perhaps open another branch. To buy a home.

On Ħamrun’s main street, his shop remains a small but steady presence - blue façade, glowing displays, a multilingual welcome offered to anyone who steps inside. Jacob’s Technician has become part of the streetscape.

The wider electronics market is shifting towards disposability, and Mr Romanu’s business survives by adapting by selling affordable second-hand devices, stocking accessories, and focusing repairs where they still matter.

Six years after our first conversation his optimism remains. It might not be a choice. If Malta’s story often centres on arrival and departure, Mr Romanu’s is about staying. About building something durable in a culture that increasingly throws things away.