Second-hand clothing

One of the things that surprised me when I came here was how almost everybody is wearing very Western clothing. The clothes look just like the clothes we wear. There is an obvious reason for that: they are our old clothes that we have donated to some organization. I tend to forget it but sometimes the clothes themselves remind me on that, for instance by having the text Hessischer Radfahrerverband, or SC Althüttendorf Frauensport in the back of a t-shirt.

So how do the clothes come here? What happens to the clothes after we chuck them to a UFF collection bin? According to UFF webpage two thirds of them are baled as such and sold onwards, I'd imagine that most of them end up somewhere in Africa. The rest is sorted already in Finland. Of these, a part will be sold in Finland (6 % from all clothes donated to UFF). Bigger share (15 %) is discarded as waste. And the rest is sold onwards as sorted quality.

The bales usually arrive first at Dar Es Salaam. There, the unsorted bales are opened, sorted and baled again. The sorted bales are then sold onwards again, for instance to Lusaka. In Lusaka, the second-hand clothes end up in Soweto (close to where I work). From there, the bales are again sold onwards. You can see lots of shops advertising 'Salaula' which means 'rummage through a pile' in Bemba. My way to work, Los Angeles road, is filled with vendors selling the lowest quality second-hand clothes. The clothes are on big tables and people can truly rummage through the piles.

Higher quality second-hand clothes are usually sold in proper shops. In fact, this is actually the sector where the father of my family works: he has his own shop in Soweto market selling second-hand clothes. It is actually pretty good business. It brings also a fair number of jobs: in sorting, selling and modifying the clothes. The lowest quality of second-hand clothes are very cheap, so even the poorest can afford to buy clothes.

Unfortunately, nothing is as simple as it might seem. The massive influx of second-hand clothes has had a devastating effect on the textile industry in many African countries, including Zambia. The jobs that have been lost were in formal sector whereas the new jobs are in the informal sector. Then again, a fair question is whether the Zambian textile industry would've been able to compete with Chinese imports. At least second-hand is environmentally sound and generates more jobs than new imports from China.

What would be the optimal solution to this? I don't know – if I knew, I would probably be doing something else than volunteering here. All I can say is that buying low quality clothes and dumping them to charity is a very bad idea, and that buying second-hand at home is a good idea. However, I think the whole issue illustrates well a problem in donating to development aid: The focus is not in the real needs of the poor. Instead, we just want to get rid of our old clothes and have a clean conscience for buying more stuff.


(The picture is from a market somewhere in the countryside. It doesn't quite look like this in Lusaka but Los Angeles road and Soweto market are not the places where I want to go and take photos.)