In 2023, the US exported 17.9% of its second-hand clothes making it the leading country in the second-hand exportation market worth USD193.7 billion. Many Western charities, such as Goodwill, receive donated items, assuming these pieces of clothing will help clothe people in dire financial situations or housing insecure. In reality, however, charities are part of a booming industry selling most of the clothes to companies that in turn sell them to countries of the Global South, especially in Africa.

This phenomenon has been recorded across the continent, raising alarm, such as in Ghana. Fashion activists and designers are tackling the issue by raising awareness of the dangers of Westerners “donating” their clothes to charities that send them on to destinations in the Global South where they may well end up in landfill.

Dakar, Senegal, is one of the destinations where discarded clothing—mostly fast fashion brands—finishes its journey. Some Senegalese fashion shops, such as Guiguiss boutik and Friperzz have decided to tackle the issue by promoting second-hand fashion and in some cases, upcycling it.

These Senegalese fashion brands primarily promote their work online, targeting a young, hip crowd of other Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora. They also scout popular second-hand markets such as Marché Colobane, one of the most popular markets in Dakar.

Guiguiss boutik upcycles 90s and Y2k second-hand clothes (they dropped a collection featuring upcycled football kits during Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2023), as well as creating jewelry from discarded items. Friperzz specializes in selling upcycled football tees as trendy fashion items, perfectly timed with the rise of attention to the upcoming AFCON championship, set to take place in 2025 in Morocco. Once they acquire the clothes, they go through them to identify what can be sold and what should be discarded. They usually have a vision of the specific items they want to upscale or will come with ideas after sourcing second-hand clothes at different markets. The next step is to communicate their vision to the tailors they work with—and if there’s something Senegal excels at, it’s tailoring, with around 61,000 tailor shops in Dakar alone.

The capital has an extraordinary number of Fashion brands such as Tongoro by Sarah Diouf (worn by Beyonce and Rihanna), Selly Raby Kane, Xalil Xissém Owens by Ousseynou Owens Ndiaye, and Mody Tidiane Fall. Dakar Fashion Week is a known hub for the latest in contemporary fashion out of the continent. Many renowned tailors in the region have set up shop locally, such as Pape Beye and Bada Seck. There are also multiple markets to buy fabric directly, such as Marché Colobane or Marché Sandaga. 

While Senegal’s reputation for impeccable tailoring remains, second-hand clothes are cheaper and more accessible for the average customer; you don’t have to find a piece of fabric, take it to your tailor, and wait for the clothes to be made, reducing the barrier of labor costs. These items are also sometimes perceived as more fashionable because they are coming from Western countries. The unintentional byproduct of this surge in upcycled fashion, despite it being an innovative approach to a massive environmental issue, is that customers with limited budgets are less likely to buy homegrown brands.

Upcycling for these online brands can be as simple as adding a few pieces of fabric to garments—usually scraps from fabric used to make tailor-made clothes or from items that are about to be discarded—or as complex as completely transforming them, such as turning a sports tee into a skirt. The most prized and popular items in the secondhand market tend to be sports tees and football kits,.But with the other growing number of fast fashion items being discarded in the Global North and then arriving in Senegal, the quality of the fashion items Africans have access to in second-hand markets and stores has decreased.

The irony in the fast-fashion waste debacle is that countries such as Senegal export cotton only to have the end product returned to their shores to be discarded as “charity.” In 2022- 2023, it was estimated that Senegal exported 28,000 bales, but because the country lacks a mature cotton industry due to lack of infrastructure, sellers and businesses pay a hefty price to import new or second-hand clothes, many made of cotton.

Although it’s undeniable that the second-hand fashion market has had a positive impact on the overconsumption of clothing items—making a dent in greenhouse emissions, for example—the emerging industry is not a net positive in Africa. While the growing niche is creating jobs for different populations—from the people selecting the clothes when they arrive in Africa to sellers and even upcycling fashion brands—the second-hand market is still a precarious endeavor. The profits that charities make selling second-hand clothing are not shared with the sellers in Africa. The latter have little control over the quality or quantity of the clothes they receive and often have to go into debt to buy their first bales. 

The growth of the second-hand market also has a devastating impact on local African fashion markets and brands that simply can’t compete.  The roots of this dilemma go back to the Transatlantic slave trade and colonization. European powers have sought to make the continent entirely dependent on their exports that they controlled and made fortunes from, from food to infrastructure, to fashion. Although Africans have made certain imports their own—such as Ankara wax, a Dutch import that was inspired by Indonesian Batik—it’s undeniable that the rich diversity of African traditional clothing has certainly suffered as a result. And now, the second-hand fashion market is putting the nail in the coffin for the contemporary African local fashion industry, maximizing the revenues from selling bales of discarded waste in the Global North under the pretense of “conservation.” 

It is very unlikely that Western charities which are responsible for the mass exportation of fashion items in Senegal will use the significant funds they earn from it to improve the working conditions of African workers in the second-hand fashion industry. It’s also likely that African fashion brands and the fashion industry, in general, might not be big enough to resist the growth of the second-hand industry. While initiatives like Senegalese second-hand upcycling brands are welcome, more needs to be done to stimulate the local market and to resist the practices of Western countries acting like Africa is a dumping ground for everything that needs to be discarded—fashion or otherwise.