Declining Market for Used Clothes in Africa

The sale of used clothing is a billion-dollar global industry. According to some estimates, almost 70% of garments that are donated globally end up on the African continent. This happens through a complex global supply chain, where donated items that cannot be sold in thrift shops in high-income countries are resold in bulk to commercial textile recyclers. The garments are then sent to sorting centres, often located in the Middle East or Eastern Europe. These are then graded and sorted into bales. The bales are in turn resold to wholesalers on the African continent. But scholars have also highlighted the complexities of this billion-dollar industry and how these commodity chains perpetuate poverty. This has led to a pushback. In 2016, the leaders of Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi issued a communiqué outlining a major tariff increase on imported used clothing. The plan was to ban all imports of used clothing by 2019. But the international trade disputes that followed led most countries to back out from implementing the ban.

SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION