People have been talking about this for a while…
Local producers can’t beat the price/quality of used Western clothes, so donating clothes actually hurts their society and prevents them from growing their own industries. So if we keep donating, theyll never become self sufficient.
It’s a tricky situation
so donating clothes actually hurts their society
No, it hurts their industry, their society is benefited by the poorest people having decent clothes they can actually afford. Their society isn’t hurt by a lack of local sweatshops where children wearing rags stitch together clothing they could never afford to buy.
Think about how many people get a job selling the used clothes for low wages to how many would work in a textile factory…
And making their own clothes doesn’t mean becoming a sweatshop for the rest of the world.
I have no idea about what their child labor laws are, but I doubt only children would work in textile.
It’s Africa. Most countries don’t have or follow child labor laws. Sweatshops across the continent will not be any better than the Asian ones that currently supply the west. A ban would initially see domestic small businesses fill the gap, but within 1-2 decades the continent would be dominated by industrial sweatshops and most of the profits would go to < 1%.
Why should we think about the domestic capitalists profit margins anyway, instead of the significant increase in resource consumption this ban would cause (textile, carbon, and land)… The increase in demand for first use textiles alone would drive up the cost of textiles everywhere.
Textile businesses failed all across the west due to globalisation. The solution has never been to ban foreign textile imports. This wreaks of local capitalists trying to monopolise the continents market, so that they can price gouge in the name of “the economy”.
So their economy is lacking the jobs that industry could provide then. The people having nicer clothes but fewer jobs might not be as positive as a trade off as it might seem.
I wonder if they couldn’t focus on other domestic industries instead? More lucrative ones. DW say 59,000 tons of clothes end up being thrown in the desert so it doesn’t seem like there’s a need to create even more clothes.
As much as I hate corporate subsidies, I think what would be better is letting the people making clothes, sell the donations rather than just the current resellers who aren’t contributing anything meanful.
They can use the profits to reinvest into making their own. Eventually they’d be able to match the quality of used clothes, which would create meaningful job growth instead of a few clerks working at resale shops while the owners make huge profits.
Like I said, it’s complicated
Thats not a bad idea. Like a license where a requirment is a shop that is currently selling local stores.
Why is making a resource there is already an abundance of necessary for growth? Even if there is no room for any other kind of industry you could then move onto the service sector.
All service sector jobs rely on some sort of resource or on manufactured products. A full service economy is impossible. And especially when there is a low demand for services because people keep their resources for essential commodities.
The resource we are talking about is cheap clothing though. Producing cheap clothing just feels like digging holes to fill them back in again. Why would you want productive jobs that don’t actually produce anything of value? What would be the point of producing paperclips if someone either gave you a bunch of paperclips or sold them to you extremely cheaply?
I get the self reliance aspect. However for clothing I don’t think it’s as important because a country isn’t going to collapse if it can’t get clothing imports for a year, like it would if it were reliant on food imports.
Anyway, the over production of clothing for the West definitely is a problem, and it’s highlighted by cases like this. But I wouldn’t frame it as a necessarily a Ugandan problem. We shouldn’t glorify jobs or industry for the sake of jobs or industry, they should fill a purpose that isn’t filled in people’s needs and wants.
Gently used. They would not be able to sell the holey shirts and pants I get rid of
Yeah, the percent of what is actually sold and what is donated would be good info.
Like, are we shipping and fumigating 10 tons of clothes and only 1 ton eventually gets sold and the other 9 just goes in someone else’s dump halfway around the world?
This is one of those things where it’s entirely possible we’re making problems worse by trying to help. Just the carbon costs shipping it would be significant.
Oh I don’t actually donate those. I use them for rags or toss or make shorts or such.
Real westerners outgrow their clothes before they outwear them. Even in their 20s and 30s.
I have not outgrown clothes in a long long time. Well not in a good way anyway.
Oh the other hand, if they have no issues with clothing they can use resources for another type of industry
If only more people became aware of what fast fashion does to the planet and how it helps corporates fill their wallets.
You mean I don’t have to turn the fruits of my labour into trinkets that are only useful for less than the time it took me to labour to buy it in the first place?
I’m sure I’m wasteful in other ways, but I’m thankful my wardrobe gets a new item only when an old item fails.
Climate Town has a great video on it
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a semi-authoritarian leader who has held power since 1986, declared in August that he was banning imports of used clothing, saying the items are coming “from dead people.”
The East African Community trade bloc — consisting of Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — has recommended banning imports of used apparel since 2016.
The clothes are cheap and drop further in price as traders make room for new shipments: a pair of denim jeans can go for 20 cents, a cashmere scarf for even less.
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.
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