Global business of secondhand clothes thrives in Kenya

Shaded by ragged squares of canvas, amid choking dust and the noise of hawkers, shoppers in Nairobi's Gikomba market can turn up Tommy Hilfiger jeans or a Burberry jacket for a fraction of the price in London's Regent Street or New York's Fifth Avenue.

But there's a catch: the clothes are all secondhand, discarded as worthless at charity shops or thrift stores in Europe or the United States and then shipped thousands of miles to another continent, occasionally in such pristine condition that an original price tag is still attached.

Kenya imports about 100,000 tonnes of secondhand clothes a year, providing the government revenues from customs duties and creating tens of thousands of jobs. It also offers quality clothes to Kenyans, many of whom earn less in a month what a pair of new Ralph Lauren khakis costs in the West.

To critics, the business raises the perennial problem of how Africa can build its own industry when it is flooded with cheap imports. But traders in Gikomba do not see it that way.

"It's a source of employment," said Clement Shuma from behind a pile of secondhand trousers - his speciality - that includes British high-street makes like Topman and Next, and sometimes more internationally well-known labels like Levis or Benetton.

"Even that person who's not well, who's earning little, at least can afford a piece of cheap (clothing), at a lower price instead of buying new," he said, adding prices ranged from 400 to 1,000 shillings ($4.50-$11.20) per item, depending on quality and brand.

It is a common scene across Africa, with Ghana, Tanzania, Benin, Uganda and Kenya among the biggest markets. They provide clothing to many on a continent of 1 billion where economies may be growing many Africans struggle to get by.

"Before, if you see our people, the knees are torn ... you can see the thighs," said Regina Wanjiku, a used clothes importer and wholesaler at Gikomba, describing the sartorial challenge before the business took off two or three decades ago when Kenyans depended on more expensive local products.

How the trade has grown, in part, reflects the economic changes that have swept the continent. Until the 1980s, high tariffs protected home grown garment and other businesses.

Then economic liberalisation programmes, backed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, started taking hold in Kenya and elsewhere. Tariffs were lowered and local factories had to contend with new competition. Many failed and shut.

Some industrialists say importing secondhand clothes, known in Swahili as "mitumba", undermines Kenya's own garment makers.

"That has hurt badly the domestic market," said Rajeev Arora, executive director of the African Cotton & Textile Industries Federation.

He said 85 percent of Kenya's textile plants had closed since the early 1990s, while cotton output was a tenth of 1990s levels.

Other experts say it was not the used clothing imports that drove factories out of business, but inefficient production.

Dorothy McCormick, a University of Nairobi professor who has researched Kenya's textile trade, said locally produced clothing was highly subsidised by the government and had always been too expensive to supply the domestic market.

"Mitumba" filled a gap in the market, cheaply, she said.

Kenya, a nation of 44 million people, is now building up a new garment-making business, but the focus this time is on exports. Kenyan factories exported garments worth $335 million in 2013 and the business employed 40,000 people, says Jaswinder Bedi, a Kenya-based director of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation.