Best Price!: The Roll of the Second Hand Clothing Trade in Africa
By Devin Johnson
Across West Africa, used garments are darkly nicknamed “dead white man’s clothing.” It’s an apt title, as it encapsulates the ambiguous role of used garments in the African market place. Second hand clothing, or SHC as it is commonly truncated, merits both the associations of affluence that accompany whiteness and the dubiousness of gaining something out of death. At once, the trade is charged with generating work and income for hundreds of thousands of small traders across the continent while simultaneously undermining the strong life force of industry. Unequivocally, the rapid growth of the SHC trade has had a significant impact on African markets. It has grown by tenfold over the last two decades, and represents over a billion dollars annually. As we explore the processes at work, let’s ask ourselves: are our African friends really paying best price by allowing SHC to flourish?
The ethical puzzle begins with the donation of the clothes, as in fact most garments in the SHC trade begin their journey. It’s the first, and most trivial, in a graduated series of ethical dilemmas: believing that their clothes will be given to poor people abroad, Westerners are frequently ensnared by unassuming metal bins, posing as convenient receptacles for tangential altruism and closet space nuisances. Convenient indeed, but the truth is that many such collection bins situated in parking lots across America and Europe are actually owned by forprofit organizations that sell the clothes in bulk to Global South nations. In Germany, such companies are known to purchase the Red Cross’ logo to place on their collection bins naturally, donators believe that their clothing will be used to benefit the Red Cross.
Still, not all of the raw product is generated through deception; much is donated to charities that resell the product to SHC traders and use the capital to sustain their benevolent work. Accruing ethically or not, piles of donated clothing amass in forprofit warehouses, primarily in the US, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. Before being taken to market, the product is cleaned and sorted. Workers pick through the clothes by hand, dividing them by style, type and quality. They are then washed, and bundled into rectangles about the size of a Peace Corps trunk. According to style and quality demands, the rectangles are sold to midlevel vendors and shipped to various destinations around the world, the biggest market for SHC being Africa.
One of East Africa’s main points of entry for SHC happens to be through our neighbors, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Here in the African marketplace is where the ethical dilemmas escalate. In much of Africa, SHC is charged with contributing to, perhaps even catalyzing the decline of local textile industries. In correlation with the sharp increase in SHC imports in the mid 1980’s, textile factories and African cotton production suffered sharp declines in revenues in several nations; while in the previous period, many nations supported efforts to industrialize by enacting import substitution, which generally consisted of high tariffs on clothing imports and fixed cotton prices on imports. These drops in indigenous production aligned with market liberalizations, which also brought the import of new clothing from Asia, as well as the import of cotton.
Leading up to the liberalization of markets, several nations saw consistent growth in both textiles and domestic production of raw goods, which suggests that perhaps the SHC trade is but one element, albeit significant, in a network of contributing factors related to the liberalization of markets. The liberalization of markets is a component of the metaphenomenon of globalization, which has also increased African exposure to western media and culture. This exposure has garnered an increase in demand for western styles. If the western styles offered by the SHC trade have hurt the production of African fabrics (i.e., igitenge), it follows that the informal sector of tailoring, which is linked and largely dependent on the textile industry, would also be affected. Still, as an informal sector, it’s difficult to track the impact of the SHC trade on tailoring, and there has been little scholarship following such trends. Proponents of the trade suggest that the import of western styles doesn’t undermine the tailoring industry, but rather supports and compliments it. Imperfect fits must be taken to tailors for altering. They further propose that western styles and traditional tailored clothing are not competing products; rather, they fulfill differing sets of demands according to different cultural circumstances.
Unlike other parts of Africa, SHC in Rwanda hasn’t played a particularly controversial role in undermining the textile industry; such industry in Rwanda is practically nonexistent. Today there is only one textile manufacturer in Rwanda, UtexRwa, and their goods are produced primarily for export. In this country, used clothing comprises upwards of 80% of the total value of clothing imports, and significantly more of the total volume, the rest comprising of cheap imported clothing from Asia. In January of this year, Rwanda’s Bureau of Standards banned the import of used underwear citing cases of skin diseases that were purportedly conveyed across continents on used garments. The Rwandan government expressed the hope that the ban would catalyze new industry. When asked to comment on this recent ban, representatives of UtexRwa expressed doubt about Rwanda’s readiness to domestically manufacture a product to replace this sudden dearth. Perhaps the SHC trade has prevented the growth of industry, rather than undermined a preexisting system.
In the complex mosaic of elements contributing to the failing textile industry, it’s hard to determine the precise role SHC has played. Certainly, SHC has helped to stunt the industry’s growth, if not to singlehandedly cause its demise. In Rwanda, SHC is consumed literally by all sectors of society, including the cultural minority of American Peace Corps Volunteers. Whether it has had a net positive or negative role in Africa is an opaque topic in comparison to the trade’s role in our daily lives. In personal terms, our our neighbors and friends sell the clothes and make a living off of them, we enjoy the catharsis of sifting through western cultural relics, and we delight in an occasional private joke provided by the absurdities written on people’s shirts. As PCV’s it is our job to participate in our communities as we find them, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with enjoying second hand clothing as it fits into our lives.
The ethical puzzle begins with the donation of the clothes, as in fact most garments in the SHC trade begin their journey. It’s the first, and most trivial, in a graduated series of ethical dilemmas: believing that their clothes will be given to poor people abroad, Westerners are frequently ensnared by unassuming metal bins, posing as convenient receptacles for tangential altruism and closet space nuisances. Convenient indeed, but the truth is that many such collection bins situated in parking lots across America and Europe are actually owned by forprofit organizations that sell the clothes in bulk to Global South nations. In Germany, such companies are known to purchase the Red Cross’ logo to place on their collection bins naturally, donators believe that their clothing will be used to benefit the Red Cross.
Still, not all of the raw product is generated through deception; much is donated to charities that resell the product to SHC traders and use the capital to sustain their benevolent work. Accruing ethically or not, piles of donated clothing amass in forprofit warehouses, primarily in the US, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. Before being taken to market, the product is cleaned and sorted. Workers pick through the clothes by hand, dividing them by style, type and quality. They are then washed, and bundled into rectangles about the size of a Peace Corps trunk. According to style and quality demands, the rectangles are sold to midlevel vendors and shipped to various destinations around the world, the biggest market for SHC being Africa.
One of East Africa’s main points of entry for SHC happens to be through our neighbors, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Here in the African marketplace is where the ethical dilemmas escalate. In much of Africa, SHC is charged with contributing to, perhaps even catalyzing the decline of local textile industries. In correlation with the sharp increase in SHC imports in the mid 1980’s, textile factories and African cotton production suffered sharp declines in revenues in several nations; while in the previous period, many nations supported efforts to industrialize by enacting import substitution, which generally consisted of high tariffs on clothing imports and fixed cotton prices on imports. These drops in indigenous production aligned with market liberalizations, which also brought the import of new clothing from Asia, as well as the import of cotton.
Leading up to the liberalization of markets, several nations saw consistent growth in both textiles and domestic production of raw goods, which suggests that perhaps the SHC trade is but one element, albeit significant, in a network of contributing factors related to the liberalization of markets. The liberalization of markets is a component of the metaphenomenon of globalization, which has also increased African exposure to western media and culture. This exposure has garnered an increase in demand for western styles. If the western styles offered by the SHC trade have hurt the production of African fabrics (i.e., igitenge), it follows that the informal sector of tailoring, which is linked and largely dependent on the textile industry, would also be affected. Still, as an informal sector, it’s difficult to track the impact of the SHC trade on tailoring, and there has been little scholarship following such trends. Proponents of the trade suggest that the import of western styles doesn’t undermine the tailoring industry, but rather supports and compliments it. Imperfect fits must be taken to tailors for altering. They further propose that western styles and traditional tailored clothing are not competing products; rather, they fulfill differing sets of demands according to different cultural circumstances.
Unlike other parts of Africa, SHC in Rwanda hasn’t played a particularly controversial role in undermining the textile industry; such industry in Rwanda is practically nonexistent. Today there is only one textile manufacturer in Rwanda, UtexRwa, and their goods are produced primarily for export. In this country, used clothing comprises upwards of 80% of the total value of clothing imports, and significantly more of the total volume, the rest comprising of cheap imported clothing from Asia. In January of this year, Rwanda’s Bureau of Standards banned the import of used underwear citing cases of skin diseases that were purportedly conveyed across continents on used garments. The Rwandan government expressed the hope that the ban would catalyze new industry. When asked to comment on this recent ban, representatives of UtexRwa expressed doubt about Rwanda’s readiness to domestically manufacture a product to replace this sudden dearth. Perhaps the SHC trade has prevented the growth of industry, rather than undermined a preexisting system.
In the complex mosaic of elements contributing to the failing textile industry, it’s hard to determine the precise role SHC has played. Certainly, SHC has helped to stunt the industry’s growth, if not to singlehandedly cause its demise. In Rwanda, SHC is consumed literally by all sectors of society, including the cultural minority of American Peace Corps Volunteers. Whether it has had a net positive or negative role in Africa is an opaque topic in comparison to the trade’s role in our daily lives. In personal terms, our our neighbors and friends sell the clothes and make a living off of them, we enjoy the catharsis of sifting through western cultural relics, and we delight in an occasional private joke provided by the absurdities written on people’s shirts. As PCV’s it is our job to participate in our communities as we find them, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with enjoying second hand clothing as it fits into our lives.