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Downtown Kampala’s Owino Market has long been a go-to enclave for rich and poor people alike looking for affordable, but quality-made used clothes, underscoring perceptions that Western fashion is superior to what is made at home. These clothes have been discarded by Europeans and Americans, then shipped to African countries by middlemen.
It’s a multimillion-dollar business, with some two-thirds of people in seven countries in East Africa having “purchased at least a portion of their clothes from the secondhand clothing market,” according to a 2017 U.S. Agency for International Development study, the most recent with such details.
Despite the popularity, secondhand clothes in East Africa are facing increasing pushback. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni declared in August that he was banning imports of used clothing, describing the used clothing as coming “from dead people.”
Trade authorities have not yet enforced President Museveni’s order, which needs to be backed by a legal measure such as an executive order. Other African governments also are trying to stop the shipments, saying the business amounts to dumping and undermines the growth of local textile industries.
The East African Community trade bloc — consisting of Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — has recommended banning imports of used apparel since 2016. But member states have not enforced it at the same pace, amid pressure from Washington.
In Uganda, the president’s order has spread panic among traders, for whom such a ban, if implemented, spells disaster. They hawk used clothes in scores of large open-air markets across the country of 45 million people, at roadside stands and even in shops in malls where it’s possible to buy secondhand clothes marketed as new.
The association of traders in Kampala, known by the acronym KACITA, opposes a firm ban on used apparel, recommending a phased embargo that allows local clothing producers to build capacity to meet demand.
“If the government should ban these clothes, let it be a gradual process, so that even it prepares our traders not to lose money,” says KACITA chairman Thadeus Musoke.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.