If one afternoon you find yourself in the Nairobi CBD, dodging pedestrians and matatus on the city’s bustling streets, few will attempt to capture your attention as zealously as the second-hand cloth hawkers. They occupy many a pavement and their synchronised calls for customers constitute some of the loudest notes in Nairobi’s chaotic chorus.
“mia..SOO..mia...SOO,” you’ll hear a pair of voices shout. Every so often, the melody entices a passerby to stop and sift through the wares. If they find a garment they like, they’ll pay and vanish back into the passing mass just as quickly as they emerged out of it. Fast and cheap– like it’s done everywhere else in Africa.
This kind of fashion– mass-produced, used, cheap– may seem an appropriate solution for the developing world. But it comes at such a high cost that stakeholders should pause and reconsider whether it is truly the foundation on which to build African fashion.
How to Become a Fast Fashion Hub
Africa itself isn't a major apparel manufacturer. That title goes to Asia. There, global brands leverage low-cost labour and high-volume textile production capabilities to produce hundreds of billions of clothes annually. It's no wonder the Asian textile industry is worth ~$400 billion and growing.
Agriculture is the only industry worth more in Africa. It's quite probable, then, that policymakers all across the continent are drawing plans to replicate the same here. But the shiny $billions won’t come easily. Here are the requirements:
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Weak labour protection
South Asia possesses the technological capacity to mass produce textile. But what really draws fast fashion brands to the region is labour.
A combination of high population and weak labour laws means brands can save significantly by outsourcing manufacturing to these countries because they don’t have to pay workers much/enough or guarantee decent working conditions.
As such, an estimated 75 million people are employed and underpaid by fast fashion in South Asia. They work under some of the most horrible factory conditions in the world, leading to disasters like the Rana factory collapse that claimed 1,134 people and injured thousands in Bangladesh in 2013.
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Poor environmental protection
Some stages of textile processing require synthetic chemicals and dyes. Many of these, like formaldehyde, azo dyes, nonylphenol ethoxylates, and perfluorinated compounds, are toxic.
There is also the matter of how much water the industry needs. Textile processing is a water-intensive process; for example, manufacturing a pair of jeans uses 4000 litres of water on average, but the least efficient processes can use well over 10,000 litres a pair.
Thus, the industry is in direct competition with communities for fresh water; communities that more often than not lack sufficient bargaining power to secure what they need due to weak water regulation and enforcement. It doesn’t end there.
Waste from fast fashion factories is not properly handled or disposed of. A lot of it ends up in the environment, leaching toxic waste into the soil and polluting the water supply. And this has created some of the most polluted waterways and living conditions on the planet.
So while it can be said that Africa meets the pre-conditions to become a fast fashion manufacturing hub, i.e., weak labour and environmental protection laws and enforcement, this path will only make things worse in a continent already reeling from the effects of fast fashion consumption.
The Price Africa Pays for Fast Fashion
Most clothes sold in Africa began life in a sweatshop somewhere in Asia. This is because, while the market may not be the initial target for brands like Shein, H&M, Zara, C&A, Peacocks, and Fashion Nova, many of their items still end up here.
This happens through donations and the second-hand clothes (called mitumba in Kenya) market. Kenya alone imported ~230,000 tonnes of mitumba in 2024. But while the design and affordability of mitumba make them a popular choice, there is a higher cost.
Quality isn’t the biggest priority in fast fashion. Brands also have a tendency to dump their dead stock alongside used wear destined for Africa. It should come as no surprise then, that the standard of used garments has been on a steady decline. See the numbers:
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In 2021, an estimated 458 million of the 900 million garments imported into Kenya were waste.
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Traders in Kenya’s mitumba markets report that as much as 50% of an imported bale of used clothing is often unsellable.
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About 40% of second-hand clothing entering Ghana’s largest market (Kantamanto) leaves as waste. Ghana imports ~15 million items of second-hand clothing each week.
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5.8 million tonnes of textile waste are generated annually across sub-Saharan Africa.
Basically, for every mtumba sold, another is discarded as waste. Africa has become little more than a dumping ground for the fast fashion industry. This is a recipe for disaster in a continent where waste management systems are still vastly underdeveloped:
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Tons of textile waste are dumped weekly in already full dumpsites like Dandora in Nairobi and Olososun in Lagos
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Much of this waste ends up in waterways, like the Nairobi River and Korle Lagoon, which are choking with debris, microplastics, and toxic compounds from textile waste.
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Burning textile waste releases toxic fumes. Unfortunately, some populations use strips of low-grade used clothing (fagia) as cooking fuel, exposing themselves to these compounds.
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Fagia is also burned in large scale as industrial fuel, releasing the compounds into the air.
How long can this go on?
Towards Sustainable Fashion
Each hastily produced garment has left a trail of overproduction, overconsumption, exploitation, and pollution stretching from Asia to Africa. So while fast fashion comes at a low price, its cost to the environment and communities is too high to bear.
This is why the future of African fashion should be anything but fast.
So in the design and production of garments, local fashion brands are encouraged to prioritize quality, fair working conditions, and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. They can also support/partner with community initiatives to protect the environment and local crafts.
The future of fashion in Africa isn’t fast. It is sustainable. Want to know how we’re keeping it sustainable at Wild Rose? Read about our plastic-free bags and/or how we make our shirt buttons from nuts. .
