On the streets of Nairobi, Kenya's capital, it is no longer unusual to see young people wearing school uniforms printed with "Chengdu No. 7 High School" and "Be Civilized, Foster New Traditions." These second-hand clothes from China are becoming sought-after fashion items among young Africans, and behind them lies a massive global second-hand clothing industry chain.

UN trade data shows that in 2018, global imports of second-hand clothing totaled $4.1 billion, of which the African market accounted for $1.3 billion—meaning more than one-third of the world's second-hand clothing ultimately flows to Africa. China's second-hand clothing exports to Africa have grown substantially since 2009, reaching $280 million by 2018, with more than 70% of trendy items sold to Kenya, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, and other countries.

In African second-hand markets, these used clothes from China are divided into three grades: Grade One consists of top international brands, priced at up to several hundred yuan and favored by the wealthy; Grade Two consists of mass fast-fashion brands, possibly with minor flaws, priced at a few dozen yuan, which working-class buyers can iron and wear; Grade Three is as cheap as five to ten yuan and is mainly sold to rural areas.

Low prices are the core competitiveness of these second-hand clothes. According to the documentary The Secret of Old Clothes, Chinese used clothing is often sold to African wholesalers at about 3,000 yuan per ton, while the cost of producing new clothes at local factories in Ghana is 40 times that of second-hand clothing. The huge price gap makes second-hand clothing unstoppable in the African market, even spawning a group of African merchants who make huge daily profits—one Ghanaian merchant said he earned as much as 250,000 yuan in a single day.

However, the boom in the second-hand clothing trade has also dealt a heavy blow to Africa's local textile industry. Kenya had 500,000 textile workers in 1980, but now has only just over 20,000; a garment factory in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, had 1,100 workers in the 1990s, but now has half that number, and most garment factories have closed down.

To protect local industries, countries such as Rwanda and Kenya have begun trying to ban or raise import tariffs on second-hand clothing. In June 2017, Rwandan President Paul Kagame stated clearly: "We must build and develop our own industries." But the policy faces a dilemma: a massive second-hand clothing industry chain has already formed, and once tariffs are sharply raised or imports are banned, it will trigger severe unemployment and increase social instability.

Some African countries have begun exploring another path, developing local textile industries indirectly by attracting foreign-funded garment companies. Tesco and Primark have entered Ethiopia, and China's C&H garment factory has also established a foothold in Rwanda. At the 2019 China Textile Industry "Belt and Road" Conference, a representative from Madagascar publicly invited Chinese garment companies to build factories there.

For China's garment manufacturing industry, investing in factories in Africa may be a new way to ease overcapacity and inventory pressure. For the world as a whole, behind the second-hand clothing trade lies the astonishing waste brought by fast fashion—each person in China buys about 10 new garments a year, of which 3 to 5 are discarded, and the discarded fiber materials are equivalent to wasting 24 million tons of crude oil each year, more than half the output of the Daqing Oilfield.

When Africa's local manufacturing rises and import channels for second-hand clothes shrink, where will these surplus old clothes flow? Changing consumption habits and promoting a virtuous ecological cycle from old clothes to new clothes may be the only sustainable way out.

Source: The old clothes thrown away by Chinese people are being snapped up in Africa? The hundred-billion industry chain hidden behind second-hand clothes · Originally published on 2022-04-18