The soggy, rainy morning was coming to an end. The downpour had stopped and the sun had at last begun to peek out from behind the clouds. Dalausi Ndyabategyeka returned to the front of his shop and shouted to the throngs of passers-by, beckoning them into his stall.
Ndyabategyeka, 27, has bright eyes and an earnest curiosity about the world. He’s studied accounting and is a fan of Eminem and American pop music.
He grew up 250 miles away, in a town near the Rwandan border. But for the last four years he’s been working here, in and around the congested Owino Market in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, selling secondhand t-shirts, jeans, and dresses. Most likely, the clothes stacked in his shop were manufactured somewhere in Asia, worn for two or three years in the U.S. or Europe, and when they fell out of fashion, were donated to a charity shop. Clothes that failed to sell there were then packed together with thousands of others, placed on a giant cargo ship, and given new life in this cramped market in East Africa.
When most people in Uganda go shopping, it’s usually for something that somebody else wore first.
Seventy percent of the clothing donated around the world eventually makes its way to Africa. One might expect that they’re given away for free — they were donations, after all — but the clothing is sold for a dollar or two at markets like Owino. Uganda, home to 40 million people, is the continent’s top importer of used clothing, according to a study commissioned by the nonprofit CUTS International.
It wasn’t always this way.
Decades ago, East Africa was largely able to clothe itself. The warm, sunny climate is perfect for cotton, and in the late 1960s Uganda was the largest producer in sub-Saharan Africa with 470,000 bales of cotton lint per year. Most bales, which weigh 400 pounds each, were consumed locally.
But over the ensuing half-century, domestic turmoil and economic liberalization caused the market to completely collapse. Today, it’s a shadow of its former self. In the 2015/2016 season, less than a quarter of that cotton was produced, and as much as 95 percent was shipped abroad.
“We used to make [clothes],” says Ndyabategyeka, who feels stuck in a poorly paying job. “But now there’s this new form of colonialism. Those people, they want to bring their products this way, so they cannot allow us [to make our own].”
Yet maybe — just maybe — that could change. The global manufacturing trade is changing and some Africans are trying to spur a revival of the clothing sector. East Africa’s leaders, for their part, are making a high-stakes bet: that domestic manufacturing can flourish, if they can just get rid of Europe and America’s cast-offs.
OOnce, East Africa was a world leader in cotton. Under British colonial rule, a system of poll taxes forced Ugandan farmers to meet specific quotas to satisfy the empire’s demands for textiles. This exploitative system pushed many poor farmers into cotton where, if they didn’t cultivate enough, they were sent to jail. Forced labor created an industry that was enormously lucrative for decades. Private ginneries, largely owned by South Asians, popped up to process the raw material and prepare it for shipment abroad. After independence in 1962, the sector was overhauled to limit competition. As was common after independence, the British essentially abandoned the industry, making no effort to transition it to Ugandans.
The following decades brought a one-two punch that would prove ruinous. During his reign of terror in the 1970s, Idi Amin, Uganda’s megalomaniacal former dictator, expelled much of the country’s South Asian community. Mismanagement grew, and through the 1970s, the cost of producing cotton increased nearly tenfold. By the late 1980s, cotton exports had decreased by 95 percent.
Then came the push from outside. At the close of the Cold War, as the U.S. and Western Europe sought to shore up power and influence over former colonies, countries across Africa were pushed to liberalized open markets.
“African countries like Uganda picked up that model and implemented it wholesale,” says Godfrey Asiimwe, a lecturer in development studies at Kampala’s Makerere University. That left the door open for manufacturers from both the West and Asia to undercut Uganda’s industry. “Our young industrialists and the industrial sector that were not protected cannot compete.”
The garment industry never recovered. And into that void stepped secondhand clothing.
As clothing manufacturing was declining in East Africa, it was booming elsewhere in the world. The rise of “fast fashion” companies such as H&M and Forever 21 meant that residents of wealthy countries could buy more clothes at a lower price than ever before. Between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production roughly doubled. Soon, people had too much clothing — and they needed a way to get rid of the castoffs.
They turned to charity shops, like the Salvation Army or Goodwill. But what many people don’t realize is that only 10 percent of that surplus clothing is resold locally. Those shops also have a supply that outstrips demand, so an industry emerged to ship those clothes overseas. In the U.S., that industry adds up to over $550 million of secondhand clothes per year.
The excess went everywhere, but often ended up in Africa, partly because of the liberalization trends that helped to decimate Uganda’s textile industry. “It gets easier to trade with Africa in that period, [the early] 90s, because there we also see a shift from command economies that are socialist, protected economies to more liberalized economies,” says Karen Tranberg Hansen, an anthropologist who has studied the secondhand clothing trade.
In the West, there is a widespread belief that Africans are desperate for old clothes, toys, and other donated hand-me-downs. But the secondhand clothing industry is anything but a charity mission — it’s now worth roughly $4 billion. “Used clothing is a commodity like any other commodity,” says Hansen.
Yet to critics like Ndyabategyeka, working in Owino market, it reeks of colonial predation: Western powers undermined domestic industries to keep them dependent. According to one study, imports of secondhand clothing were responsible for roughly 40 percent of the decline in regional clothing manufacturing and 50 percent of the drop-off in employment between 1981 and 2000. University of Toronto economist Garth Frazer compares the secondhand clothing industry to food aid, which helps to fill empty bellies “but at times clearly harms African food producers.” At the same time, the trade contributes to a larger, paternalist narrative that sees wealthy countries donating clothes, food, and other goods to “helpless” and “starving” Africa.
Now, more than 80 percent of clothing purchases in Uganda are of secondhand garments.
The clothes come from all over the world, says Mohamed Kitaka, 30, a middleman who buys shipments from international importers and resells smaller bundles to traders. But those from America are least desirable. “The problem with America, they are large. Too big,” he says with a laugh. “The most selling is China. They have many [sizes].”
Kitaka would love to see a rebirth in Uganda’s textile industry, but he fears it might be a long time coming. “The last few years it has been down,” he says.
On the banks of the Nile River, near the beginning of its journey from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea, stands the Nytil garment factory. The factory has stood in some form since British rule, and bears the distinction of being older than the country it inhabits.
The large complex is crumbling in corners, offering a reminder of the industry’s past highs and lows. But Nytil’s fate is looking up, says general manager Vinay Kumar, 47, an Indian immigrant who came to Uganda five years ago. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has recently made efforts to promote locally produced goods, Kumar says — including clothing manufactured at this very plant. “Their focus is on local production now, and they are serious these days,” he says. Last year, the government launched a Buy Uganda Build Uganda initiative to raise the profile of local industries including textiles. Museveni himself claims to prefer Nytil shirts rather than suits from abroad.
From his air-conditioned office one floor above the shop floor, Kumar oversees a small army of 2,000 garment workers, working in three shifts around the clock. In December, they were diligently working on a government commission, working in rows to stitch together military uniforms by the hundreds.
Nytil is one of the few garment manufacturers operating in Uganda today, and it consumes much of the local cotton that isn’t exported. Still, the company is largely dependent on the government: hundreds were laid off in 2015 when government orders stopped.
But Kumar has high hopes for the future. “We are trying to tap into the U.S. market,” he says. “We think we are ready.” The company has had initial conversations with Target and Bloomingdale’s, he says. (Spokespeople with the retailers did not comment on their plans.)
And maybe, he hopes, events are conspiring so that East Africa will be at the center of the garment industry of tomorrow.
As a whole, sub-Saharan Africa is a minor player. But the industry does need a new hub. Across East and Southeast Asia, incomes are rising and manufacturing is becoming more expensive. Soon, “their factories will be used to supply their own domestic marketplace,” says Nick Earlam, the CEO of U.K.-based Plexus Cotton.
Might it now be Africa’s turn?
Earlam thinks so. In 2014, his corporate group opened the Fine Spinners garment factory in Kampala to capitalize on the changing landscape. “Textiles is the industry which has industrialized the world over time,” Earlam adds. “Now the time is Africa’s time.”
Ethiopia has been first out of the gate, which already produces clothes for the Gap, H&M, and other multinational companies. Growth elsewhere is likely to be gradual, but McKinsey consultants foresee a “potential watering hole” for the industry. In their most optimistic model, East Africa would export $3 billion worth of garments annually by 2025, putting the region on par with Pakistan or Mexico.
Still, it’s unclear whether Uganda’s few new factories are one-time gambits or the beginning of a larger trend. The government’s boosterism of local manufacturing is still largely rhetorical and hasn’t yet trickled down to the open-air market where Ndyabategyeka works. “Our government is not serious,” he scoffs.
Furthermore, manufacturers still have a long wish list. Interest rates are too high, they say, and there’s little assistance for navigating the complex rules of international trade. Farmers complain that the price of cotton fluctuates wildly with the global market.
Ras Kasozi, 27, has run into these problems. The award-winning Ugandan fashion designer has championed a homegrown aesthetic that draws equal inspiration from secondhand clothing and traditional materials such as barkcloth. He will often find raw materials in the secondhand markets like Owino and “upcycle” them into innovative designs that blend contemporary and folk styles.
“I believe if we have so many old clothes, why do we fight and waste our money again to buy new ones, you get? I feel like that should be for the rich, and then we creative ones, we live our creative world,” he says from his airy workshop on an out-of-the-way Kampala side street. Around him, a half-dozen tailors hunch over sewing machines and yards of fabric to complete his commissions. “My aim is to make sure that the world gets to identify the fashion from Uganda,” he adds.
But making clothes is the easy part. Kasozi longs for a sophisticated business and PR team to transform his operation from a niche boutique to a recognizable international brand. “I have so many dreams. But to put them in reality, it’s taking me years,” he says. Often he will find potential foreign customers on social media, but will have no “bridge” to form a lasting business relationship.
East African leaders have a plan, but it’s a risky one. The imports are “killing the textile and apparel sector in Uganda,” Museveni said in New York in September. So they’re raising tariffs on them in the hope that it will force East Africans to buy from local suppliers.
It’s unclear whether the strategy will work. Secondhand clothing is widespread and there’s not nearly enough local manufacturing to replace the supply from abroad.
There may also be international repercussions. The U.S. has warned that a ban on secondhand clothing could violate terms of a trade law called the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The law grants African countries special access to the U.S. market, but last year the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, a trade group, complained that an imports ban would be unfair to U.S. industries. According to the group, banning used clothing would negatively affect nearly 200,000 American workers and impose “significant economic hardship” on the U.S. companies that send clothes abroad. The U.S. trade office has launched a review.
In the meantime, traders across Owino Market are getting squeezed from both ends. Juliet Nantumbwe, 40, who huddles in her small stall just a few feet away from Ndyabategyeka, can’t pass along the extra costs to her customers, she says. “If you raise [prices], the customers, they don’t buy.”
To jump start the domestic garment industry, Uganda is trying to manipulate both its supply and the demand. But local factories remain several steps away from pumping out clothing as cheaply and quickly as foreigners.
So even if the ban does force Ugandans off of secondhand clothes, they might not turn to domestically made products, suggests fashion blogger Hassan Ssentongo, 26. Instead, they might look to China, still the world’s largest garment producer and with a reach across Africa that extends to clothing.
“The clothing [from China] is cheap. It comes in what is on, what is on trend. Really, they can bring shirts that look like they’re Versace or something,” Ssentongo says.
At his shop, Ndyabategyeka doesn’t sell any clothing manufactured in Uganda. But behind the piles of secondhand slacks and shirts are several pairs of brand new jeans, unworn and wrapped in fresh plastic. They come from China. Even at twice the price of the secondhand clothes, they are still much cheaper than anything made locally.
“They can bring for us clothes that are not so expensive,” he says. “I feel it is a good thing.”
