By Gilbert Nakweya
Lead Caption: Second hand clothing for sale at a Masai market in Gorogoro, Kenya.Credit: Getty
MOUNTAINS of discarded clothes, often shipped to Africa under the guise of charity, are choking landfills, clogging waterways, and polluting communities. This tide of textile waste is a growing threat to Africa’s climate resilience, researchers say.
At this year’s United Nations (UN) International Day of Zero Waste, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, says waste from the textile and fashion industry is creating an environmental crisis for African countries.
The shipping of used clothing, mostly from the United States, Europe, and China to Africa is a longstanding process, but with limited waste management infrastructure, these garments increasingly end up in landfills, are burned in open air, or dumped in rivers.
With global clothing production projected to reach 200 billion garments annually by 2030, Africa is facing a deluge of textile waste. Speaking at the UNEP event, Andersen urged consumers to reuse clothing and reduce overconsumption. “Every second, a garbage truck load of clothes is dumped or burned. Land, rivers, and oceans are becoming more polluted from cheap, easily discarded items,” she says.
Waste colonialism
Across Africa, fast fashion brands are flooding markets with clothing few people want or can use. For example, the Kantamanto market in Ghana’s capital, Accra, receives an estimated 1,500 tonnes of secondhand clothing each week, according to a 2024 report published by Greenpeace Africa,. Nearly half a million of those garments become waste, overwhelming communities, despite efforts to repair and upcycle the clothes. “About 89% contained synthetic fibers that break down into microplastics,” says Sam Quashie-Idun, Greenpeace Africa’s investigations manager, who co-authored the report. “In some cases, textile waste is even used to fuel public bath houses, releasing toxic carcinogenic chemicals into the air,” he says.
In Kenya, secondhand clothing, locally known as Mitumba is booming. Data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shows the country is now Africa’s largest consumer of used clothing. But many of these imported clothes are unusable and quickly become waste, says Quashie-Idun.
To him, flooding markets in Africa with garments that cannot be used amounts to “waste colonialism” – the practice of Western nations exporting their waste to less developed countries – which burdens African countries with the consequences of overproduction elsewhere. “The fashion industry is turning a blind eye to the inevitable unwanted and unusable secondhand garments that overwhelm [Africa],” Quashie-Idun says. The fast fashion industry is not just filling landfills, it’s also accelerating global warming, he says.
According to the global environmental organization, World Resources Institute, the apparel industry already accounts for up to 8% of global carbon emissions. UNEP warns that the entire textile value chain, from fibre production to consumer use, contributes to environmental degradation. In a recent report, they found that global municipal solid waste now exceeds 2.3 billion tonnes annually, with textiles forming a significant share. A study in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment1 has shown that switching from sea to air transport for garments increases emissions by more than 100%, with some garments travelling around the world multiple times before reaching consumers.
Textile waste often ends up in garbage heaps like this one.Credit: Getty
“We need solutions that offer compensation”
Elisa Tonda, chief of UNEP’s resources and markets branch, says pollution occurs at every stage of textile production, from pesticides in cotton fields in Tanzania, to plastic microfibres released in laundry. In garment-producing countries like Kenya, leftover scraps from manufacturing also contribute to waste, says Tonda. “These clothes stay in use for a very short time, then end up in landfills, incinerated, or dumped in areas without proper systems to handle them,” she says. “To address climate change, we must rethink the production and consumption model of fashion. That means keeping clothes in use longer and shifting to more sustainable business models,” she says.
Still, Quashie-Idun says that the burden should not fall on African countries. “Brands and regulators in the Global North must be held accountable,” he says. The solutions, he says, should include developing a new model of sustainable fashion rooted in African values — one that supports local creativity and economy. “Communities are already transforming textile waste into jobs, art, and opportunity,” he says. “But true change requires bold investments, real accountability, and a fashion industry that puts people before profits.”
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d44148-025-00203-4
* https://www.nature.com/articles/