Mitumba: Rethinking Africa’s second-hand clothing economy

Driven by fast-fashion overconsumption, bales of second-hand clothes are shipped to African ports, often under the guise of "charity." Ultimately, the West's closet clean-out has become Africa's existential dilemma.

What is framed as generosity is, in practice, a multimillion-dollar enterprise, with charities and recycling firms selling these donations for profit.

Unlike conventional market exchange, it operates as economic dumping, with garments sold at prices that strangle local manufacturers, and stifles domestic industry while cementing dependence on Western discards.

For decades, African nations have navigated a deeply contradictory relationship, swinging between attempts to ban the trade and reluctant acceptance.

The central question remains unresolved: Are the sprawling 'Mitumba' (second-hand clothes) markets a vital livelihood for millions, or a form of neo-colonialism yet unnoticed?

Raw material-producing Africa consumes fast fashion

Though many African countries are among the world's largest producers of textile raw materials, the continent lags far behind in fabric and apparel manufacturing.

These cotton-growing economies end up buying back finished products from the West, stripped of any added value. For many of their poor citizens, second-hand clothes are the only viable option.

Known as “mitumba” across East Africa, "okrika" in Nigeria and "salaula" in Zambia, these garments are initially donated by consumers in the West, then collected, sorted, and sold by large charity networks and commercial recycling firms before ever reaching African markets.

Far from being just a means of affordable dressing, they have become a pathway to self-reliance for millions. Vendors purchase the bales and sell each piece individually in bustling markets, forging a livelihood on the most unstable of grounds.

The US veto and a livelihood under threat

The tension between banning the trade and protecting livelihoods came to a head in 2016. The East African Community (EAC) agreed to ban the import of used clothing by 2019, a move toward textile self-sufficiency.

This ambition was swiftly crushed when the Trump administration threatened to expel the nations from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a key U.S. trade pact that offered preferential market access.

While AGOA’s provisions had long shaped trade dynamics, its authorization lapsed in September 2025 amid uncertain prospects for renewal, highlighting once again how Western economic leverage has consistently prioritized market access over genuine industrial partnership.

This move exposed a core truth of the relationship: the West would rather Africa remain a market for its discarded clothes than become a manufacturing competitor.

Under immense pressure, the EAC rescinded the ban. The reasons go beyond geopolitics and into the gritty reality of daily life.

The trade is a vast, informal economy. In Kenya alone, it employs nearly two million people. For low-income communities, mitumba offers clear advantages in price, perceived quality, and variety that local industry cannot match.

The question posed by Abdullah, a longtime Tanzanian vendor, captures the cruel dilemma: "Who can afford new clothes?" It is a choice between dressing in the West's cast-offs or going without.

This preference is not merely economic. A second-hand t-shirt from Europe or America often carries a subtle, powerful cultural cachet, a perceived mark of quality and modernity that locally produced, new garments sometimes lack.

This creates a cruel psychological bind: a reliance on the West's discards is reinforced by an internalized belief in their inherent superiority, making the journey toward sartorial sovereignty not just an industrial challenge, but a cultural one.

Mitumba as a First-Rate Exploitation

This economic cycle of dependency also opens the door to a more insidious crisis. Not all second-hand clothes shipped from the West are wearable.

Research from The OR Foundation in Ghana indicates that the quality of garments in the bales has declined yearly, with a growing portion being unsellable and creating a mounting waste problem for recipient nations.

This has turned landscapes in countries like Ghana into mountainous textile graveyards, where non-biodegradable synthetic fabrics leach toxins into the soil and water, a final, poisonous gift from fast fashion.

This accelerates global warming and deepens environmental degradation

A stark imbalance is laid bare: the Global North profits from overproduction and waste, while African countries pay the price. Under the cloak of “donation,” the Global North offloads the toxic byproducts of its overconsumption onto Africa's back, keeping its own house clean.

Africa's other predicament is that the mitumba market has, as an "alternative economy," completely displaced local manufacturing. Today, millions depend on this sector for their daily bread, yet there is no sustainable local production.

Local industries on the continent still find it difficult to translate its raw materials into large-scale textile production or competing brands. The bales from the West are not just a source of income but a chain of dependency.

If the West one day decides to cut off these "so- called aid packages," Africa will be left with neither a viable textile industry nor the productive capacity to employ its people. In other words, a continent made dependent on Western garbage will be left economically and socially naked if that flow stops.

Weaving a new future

Therefore, African leaders can break this cycle. The goal cannot be a simple ban without a robust alternative, but a comprehensive industrial policy to revive and strengthen local textile manufacturing.

This means reopening shuttered factories, incentivizing young entrepreneurs, and strategically branding the continent’s deep-rooted, high-quality weaving traditions, not merely as aesthetic heritage, but as the foundation of economic independence.

Crucially, this revival does not mean isolation. As Africa rethinks its place in global textile value chains, the path forward lies in diversifying partnerships and shifting from a model of dependency to one of selective, strategic collaboration. 

Today, the continent already engages with a range of producers from China and South Asia to the Middle East, each offering different cost, quality, and dependency trade-offs.

Within this landscape, some importers point to countries such as Türkiye, alongside others, whose more durable and consistent textiles may serve as transitional partners rather than permanent substitutes.

Engaging with such partners for technology, skills transfer, or balanced trade in intermediate goods could support the continent’s larger aim of moving from raw material export to value-added production and building its own brands.

Africa's true power lies not in the contents of Western bales, but in the future it weaves on its own looms. A future strengthened not by dressing in the world's leftovers, but by tailoring its own destiny through innovative, equitable partnerships and revived industrial pride.

The author, Sare Şanlı, is a commentator specialising in African politics and global power relations on the continent.

 Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.