East Africa’s Used Clothes Dilemma: Why Millions Depend on Second-Hand Garments

For millions of families across East Africa, the bundle of second-hand clothing known colloquially as mitumba is not a luxury — it is a livelihood. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania collectively import hundreds of millions of used garments every year from Europe, North America and China, feeding a trade worth billions of dollars and employing hundreds of thousands of people across the supply chain. Now, governments in the region are pushing to curb those imports — and discovering that the social and economic costs of doing so may be higher than anyone anticipated.

The initiative is not new. East African nations have periodically floated bans or steep tariff hikes on imported second-hand clothing for more than a decade, driven partly by concerns over the cultural impact of Western fast fashion discarded in the Global North landing in African markets, and partly by ambitions to nurture domestic textile industries. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has for years championed the creation of a domestic apparel manufacturing sector, arguing that Africa should not be, in his phrase, a “dumping ground” for the world’s textile waste.

But the execution has repeatedly stalled, and for a simple reason: the alternatives are not ready. A 2018 attempt by Kenya to impose stricter licensing requirements on second-hand clothing dealers collapsed within months after traders took to the streets in protest and prices for new garments proved prohibitive for the average Kenyan household. A similar attempt in Rwanda saw the licensing regime quietly shelved after manufacturers failed to scale up production quickly enough to meet domestic demand.

The challenge is fundamentally one of capacity. Domestic textile factories in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania operate at a fraction of the scale needed to supply a combined population of more than 150 million people. The cost of locally produced garments remains substantially higher than second-hand equivalents, a gap compounded by higher energy costs, limited access to affordable credit for factory upgrades, and competition from cheaper imports of new clothing from China and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the second-hand trade has evolved into a sophisticated supply chain of its own. In Kenya’s Gikomba market — one of the largest open-air markets in East Africa — dealers sort, grade and redistribute thousands of tonnes of used clothing every week. The business supports not just the dealers themselves but truck drivers, warehouse workers, tailors who alter garments for local fit, and informal street vendors who sell individual items at prices that put new clothing entirely out of reach for many households.

Critics of the trade, including some domestic textile manufacturers, argue that the quality of second-hand imports has deteriorated over time, with much of what arrives now being genuinely unsuited for reuse — torn, stained or recyclable only in the most limited sense. They argue that setting meaningful quality standards, rather than an outright ban, could allow East African governments to protect consumers while simultaneously creating space for local producers to compete.

Others point to the environmental dimension. The global rise of fast fashion means that tonnes of textile waste that would previously have been incinerated or landfilled in producing countries now gets shipped abroad. Critics say East Africa is absorbing the environmental costs of a production model that benefits Northern consumers and corporations. The arithmetic of sustainability, they argue, does not favour indefinite continuation of the trade, however entrenched it has become.

What is clear is that the political rhetoric around curbing second-hand clothing imports has consistently run ahead of the industrial planning needed to make domestic alternatives viable. Until that gap is closed — whether through factory investment, skills training, or trade policy that genuinely levels the playing field — the bundle of mitumba will remain central to what East Africans wear, how they spend, and how they earn. The desire to change that reality is real. The capacity to do so, on the timelines being announced, remains doubtful.