Jostling for space, people jam the crowded footpaths crisscrossing a massive open market in Uganda’s capital. They are mostly looking for secondhand clothing, sifting through underwear for pairs that seem new or trying on shoes, despite getting pushed around in the crush.
Downtown Kampala’s Owino Market has long been a go-to enclave for rich and poor people alike looking for affordable, but quality-made used clothes, underscoring perceptions that Western fashion is superior to what is made at home.
These clothes have been discarded by Europeans and Americans, then shipped to African countries by middlemen.
Photo: AP
It is a multimillion-dollar business, with about two-thirds of people in seven countries in East Africa having “purchased at least a portion of their clothes from the secondhand clothing market,” according to a 2017 US Agency for International Development study, the most recent with such details.
Despite the popularity, secondhand clothes are facing increasing pushback. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a semi-authoritarian leader who has held power since 1986, in August said that he was banning imports of used clothing, saying the items are coming “from dead people.”
“When a white person dies, they gather their clothes and send them to Africa,” Museveni said.
Trade authorities have not yet enforced the president’s order, which needs to be backed by a legal measure, such as an executive order.
Other African governments are also trying to stop the shipments, saying the business amounts to dumping and undermines the growth of local textile industries. The East African Community trade bloc — consisting of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — has recommended banning imports of used apparel since 2016.
However, member states have not enforced it at the same pace amid pressure from Washington.
In Uganda, the president’s order has spread panic among traders, for whom such a ban, if implemented, spells disaster. They hawk used clothes in scores of large open-air markets across the country of 45 million people, at roadside stands and even in shops in malls where it is possible to buy secondhand clothes marketed as new.
The clothes are cheap and drop further in price as traders make room for new shipments: a pair of denim jeans can go for US$0.20, a cashmere scarf for even less.
At one of Uganda’s Green Shops, a chain specializing in used clothes, apparel reseller Glen Kalungi shopped for items his customers might want: vintage pants for men and cotton tops for women.
“I am a thrift shopper,” he said. “I usually come to these Green Shops to check out clothes, because they have the best prices around town.”
Kalungi likes to visit on clearance days when he can buy clothes for a fraction of a dollar. Then he sells them at a profit.
The chain, whose owners include Europeans, unveils new clothes every two weeks at its three stores. Some of the items are sourced from suppliers in countries including China and Germany, retail manager Allan Zavuga said.
“How they collect the clothes, we are not aware of that,” Zavuga said of their suppliers. “But [the clothes] go through all the verification, the fumigation, all that, before they are shipped to Uganda. And we get all documents for that.”
The Green Shops are environmentally friendly because they recycle used clothes in bulk, he said.
The association of traders in Kampala, known by the acronym KACITA, opposes a firm ban on used apparel, recommending a phased embargo that allows local clothing producers to build capacity to meet demand.
Some Ugandan apparel makers, like Winfred Arinaitwe, acknowledge that the quality of locally made fabric is often poor. Not surprisingly, many people would rather buy used clothing, she said.
“Because it lasts longer,” she said. “It can easily be seen.”
In Owino Market, a ban on used clothes is inconceivable to many, including some who say they do not think the president’s threat was serious.
Abdulrashid Ssuuna, who tries to persuade customers in the market to stop by his brother’s used clothing business, said a ban would deny him a livelihood.
“It’s like they want to chase us out of the country,” he said of the president’s order. “From these old clothes, we get what to eat. If you say we leave this business, you are saying we go into new clothes. But we can’t afford to go there.”
Ssuuna approaches people in Owino Market to urge them to visit the stall where his brother sells used jeans. The market is aggressively competitive, with merchants sitting behind heaps of clothes and shouting words of welcome to possible customers.
If he helps his brother sell clothing, “I get something,” said Ssuuna, who started this work after dropping out of high school in 2020.
The market is always full of shoppers, but business is unpredictable: Traders must try to anticipate what customers are looking for before they are lured by other sellers.
Some days are better than others, said Tadeo Walusimbi, who has been a used-clothes trader for six years. A government ban is simply untenable, he said.
It “will not work for me and for so many people,” Walusimbi said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.