“ Stop buying second-hand clothes, they are the clothes of the dead! », attacked Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni at the end of August as he announced his desire to ban imports of second-hand clothing. The shocking formula has not really found a contradictor: in this poor and landlocked country of East Africa, where nothing or almost nothing is bought lightly, it is not difficult to believe that it is the end of life, rather than consumerism and fast fashion (disposable fashion), which pushes white people to part with the enormous quantities of clothing which flood the region, and more broadly the continent. The presidential outing was certainly intended to try to distract Ugandan consumers a little from these extremely popular products.
Entire containers, mainly from the United States and Europe, pour into African capitals every day to meet demand. 70% of donated clothing ends up in Africa, according to a 2015 Oxfam study. In Nairobi, for example, markets and street vendors overflow onto the main roads, sometimes with a few pieces hanging on a fence or shoes displayed on a large cardboard. In the Kenyan capital, far from France, you may come across a passerby wearing a cap with the logo “La Clusaz”, a ski resort in Haute-Savoie, or a t-shirt crossed out with the improbable “Région Aquitaine”. “.
In Kampala, the capital’s immense and frenetic Owino market is the nerve center of this trade. Beyond the caged chickens, dried fish or kitchen utensils, this immense and frenetic labyrinth has thousands of second-hand shops, specializing here in dresses, there in sportswear, a little more far in hats or even jeans.
Sylivia “Shareen” – she converted to Islam – Namatovu sells baby clothes from 5,000 Ugandan shillings, or a little over 1 euro. The shopkeeper also sells a few new items, but it is the second-hand item, she insists, that goes the fastest: compared to first-price Asian confections, of lower quality and more expensive, consumers prefer second-hand goods. reputed to be solid and systematically more affordable. “I can sell ten second-hand pieces for five new ones”she confirms, perched on her little stand, in the middle of piles of tiny bodysuits and pants.
For sellers, the announcement sounds like a disaster, which they choose to only half believe. “ If this is the end of the second hand, I just have to return to the village”, jokes this thirty-year-old from the Rakai district, in the far south, while presenting a pregnant customer with pajamas for infants – some are lined with velvet, despite the tropical heat. A few dozen meters further on, Francis Kibalama, 26, sells children’s hats. He claims to earn on average 200,000 Ugandan shillings per month (50 euros). “ The ban is not good, because we eat thanks to these bundles of clothes”, he whispers. Importers, wholesalers, small informal resellers, there are four million who live directly and indirectly from second-hand goods, according to the sector association.
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