Castoff from the West, pearls in Kantamanto? A critique of second‐hand clothes trade

Lydia Ayorkor Manieson and Tiziana Ferrero‐Regis

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2023, vol. 27, issue 3, 811-821

Abstract: African countries are today the major importers of the lowest grade of second‐hand clothing (SHC). With the opening of global markets and the intense circulation of fast fashion in the Global North from the 1990s, the trade of SHC has exploded in the twenty‐first century. The fast fashion business model, which fuels the SHC trade, has led to reduced quality of clothes, limited clothing lifetime, and accelerated discard of clothing, which end up as donations or become waste. The complexity of the international geographies of the SHC trade creates opacity and secrecy, maintaining inequalities and imbalances between Global North (GN) and South (GS), which continue a relationship of colonial dependence. This paper presents a critical look at SHC exchange in Kantamanto, the biggest SHC market in West Africa, situated within the central business district of Accra, Ghana. The paper scrutinizes the export of unwanted donated clothing, popularly known as “Obroni w'awu” (white man is dead), to Kantamanto. We use direct observation along with an interpretive research design through the analysis of photos taken from Kantamanto, and scholarly and gray literature. The paper documents local practices of reuse, exposing a duality: on the one hand, clothing's symbolic value that is lost in the GN is reconstituted in the GS through exchange and labor‐creating local economies. On the other, the global trade of SHC has become synonymous with dumping, continuing a colonialist relationship between the GN and GS whereby the GN exports unwanted clothing to predominantly African countries’ landfills.

Date: 2023
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