Chaos, gangs, gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most needy
After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations.
Every day, AFP correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces.
On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust.
"Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives," Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, told AFP.
To avoid disturbances, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail.
"A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag," sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip.
- 'Truly tragic' -
Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already "thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils."
"Suddenly, we heard gunshots….. There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly," said the 42-year-old. "The scene was truly tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead."
Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the United Nations said on Friday.
The Israeli army denies any targeting, insisting it only fires "warning shots" when people approach too close to its positions.
International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes.
On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army "changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security," said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, "there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza)," said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous. "One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take."
- 'Darwinian experiment' -
Some of the aid is looted by gangs -- who often directly attack warehouses -- and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts.
"It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest," said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
"People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour," he said.
Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: "We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession."
This food is then resold to "those who can still afford it" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed $400, he added.
– 'Never found proof' -
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war triggered by the militant group's October 2023 attack.
The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the United States which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies.
However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a "death trap".
"Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians," said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
But according to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the New York Times on July 26, Israel "never found proof" that the group had "systematically stolen aid" from the UN.
Weakened by the war with Israel which has seen most of its senior leadership killed, Hamas today is made up of "basically decentralised autonomous cells" said Shehada.
He said while Hamas militants still hunker down in each Gaza neighbourhood in tunnels or destroyed buildings, they are not visible on the ground "because Israel has been systematically going after them".
Aid workers told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police -- which includes many Hamas members -- helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting.
"UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at Oxfam.
"These calls have largely been ignored," she added.
- 'All kinds of criminal activities' -
The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid.
"The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May.
According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control.
The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks".
The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab.
Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that".
"None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named.
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Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Gaza aid distribution site photos are staged for emotional effect, German media claims
The BILD report focuses on a widely circulated photo of desperate Gazan women and children holding pots and pans in front of a food distribution site. There has been significant media attention over the last few days regarding reports by two German-language papers - BILD and Süddeutsche Zeitung - that accuse Gaza-based press photographers of staging photos of starving civilians. The issue of staged photos or photos taken out of context came to a head at the end of July when the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said that a picture of a Gazan youth being portrayed as starving is actually suffering from a genetic disease. TheBILD report focuses on a widely circulated photo of desperate Gazan women and children holding pots and pans in front of a food distribution site. Except photos taken by others at the same site show that the hoard is actually standing opposite freelance photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, commissioned by the Turkish news agency Anadolu, BILD argues. The pots and pans are not being held up to the food distribution site, but the photographer, which Bild claims is staging for means of propaganda. Undistributed photos show Gazans calmly receiving aid Additionally, BILD adds that his photos at the Gaza aid distribution site show mainly women and children, but that other photos at the same site show mostly adult men calmly waiting for and receiving food. Fteiha did not distribute these ones. "I assume that many of these pictures with starving and sick children are simply staged or come from other contexts," emeritus history professor and photography expert Gerhard Paul told SZ. Paul, who has been researching images from Israel and Gaza for 25 years, said the photos are not fake, but "people are presented in a certain way or provided with a falsifying caption to mobilize our visual memory and emotions." Paul told SZ that he and his students at the University of Flensburg recreated the scenes from images of various wars in three dimensions in order to understand the situation depicted, which is often not easy to understand from the two-dimensional image. "Where is the photographer? Who is standing around him?" he asks. "What do the people depicted in the picture see? Do they see what we suspect, for example a food distribution? Or are they facing photographers?" "The images also have an additional function," Paul explained. "They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Many people don't even remember these pictures. Hamas is a master at staging images." However, he stressed that the journalists and photographers in Gaza are in a dangerous position, and due to their proximity to Hamas terrorists, cannot move freely. "Little bypasses Hamas," Christopher Resch of Reporters Without Borders told SZ. Resch also told SZ that the concept of photographers staging photos is not unique to Gaza, and is not necessarily problematic. "I don't think it's reprehensible when a photographer instructs people to stand here and there with their pots," he said. "As long as it approximates reality." Nevertheless, BILD's report stressed that the photographer in question - Fteiha - is not exactly unbiased in his photojournalism. He posts videos to social media saying "f*** Israel" and works for a news agency that speaks directly to the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has had ties to Hamas. As a result of the investigation, the German Press Agency and Agence France Press told BILD that they will no longer work Fteiha and would carefully check the pictures of other photo reporters as well, whereas Reuters says his photos "meet the standards of accuracy, independence and impartiality." "Despite his bias, his photos are published by major outlets like CNN, BBC, and Reuters," Israel's foreign ministry seethed in its response to the two reports. "With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren't reporting, they're producing propaganda." "This investigation underscores how Pallywood has gone mainstream with staged images and ideological bias shaping international coverage, while the suffering of Israeli hostages and Hamas atrocities are pushed out of frame," the ministry concluded. The Jerusalem Post watched the video taken from the aid destruction site a few days ago, shared by Al Jazeera Arabic. It is worth noting that the same setting of the women and children with pots and pans is seen in the video, and they are receiving food, so it is possible that the photo by Fteiha was taken before the aid workers arrived. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Race to Upcycle Africa's Fast Fashion Dumping Ground
People offload bales of secondhand clothes from a truck at the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, on November 16, 2023. Credit - Nipah Dennis—AFP/Getty Images We've all done it: dropped a bag of torn tees and threadbare shorts in the neighborhood recycling bin—or left it beside, as the container is typically overflowing—and walked away with a quiet satisfaction. Maybe even hit the shops afterward to restock your now depleted wardrobe. Our honest presumption is that these cast-offs will now go to help someone less fortunate—either sold by a charity shop, gifted to a homeless person, or sent overseas to clothe a refugee family. Sadly, this is often just fantasy. Much of today's used clothing—donated with good intentions—will likely end up in a landfill halfway across the globe, quite possibly off the West African nation of Ghana. In 2021, Ghana imported $214 million of used clothing, the most in the world, and it remains among the top destinations for discarded fast fashion today. In Accra, Ghana's sprawling capital, Kantamanto spans 42 acres and is purported to be the world's largest secondhand textile market. Each week, it receives 15 million pieces of used clothing, amounting to some 225,000 tons a year. If you can think of it, you can find it within Kantamanto's labyrinthine alleyways, which are piled high with used sneakers, bras, blouses, ties, belts, leather jackets, shoes, bags, and suit trousers. Clothes are predominantly sourced from Western charities, which sell donations in bulk to third are then shipped to Ghana from the U.K., U.S., and Europe—hence the local nickname of obroni wawu, or 'dead white man's clothes.' Globally, consumers buy over 80 billion new apparel items annually—a four-fold increase from just two decades ago. It's estimated that some 57% of used clothing goes to landfills while a quarter is incinerated. On average, Americans each purchase 53 new items of clothing every year, though collectively toss out 17 million tons of clothing and textiles annually, some 65% of which is discarded within 12 months. However, this glut is increasingly supplemented by growing consignments from affluent East Asia. Every Thursday, new bales arrive on container ships into Accra port and are then distributed around Kantamanto's 15,000 stalls, typically by female migrant workers hailing from Ghana's impoverished north, who ferry these 120-pound bundles balanced on their heads in exchange for a wage less than $2 a day. Each bale comes with an origin country and rough description about the contents—jeans, leather jackets, sneakers—alongside an A-to-C quality grading, which in turn reflects the price charged. But purchasing these bales is a huge gamble, with traders estimating that some 30-40% on average is unsellable—stained or torn polyester, for example, or ragged undergarments. Wandering Kantamanto, TIME saw an abject jumble on sale, including cracked ski goggles, a lone toddler's toy boxing glove, as well as fleece-lined mountaineering boots (a tough sell in equatorial West Africa). Victoria Bamfo, 38, whose mother opened her family stall in Kantamanto over four decades ago, sells around four bales a week but says each is a high-stakes gamble. She speaks to TIME while inspecting her latest consignment of a 'grade B' women's blouses, which cost her 4,500 Ghanian cedis ($430) for the 170-odd pieces within. However, there's no guarantee she'll break-even—let alone turn a profit. 'Sometimes you might sell 90% of it; sometimes just 30%,' she laments. 'But then once you've bought the thing, it's not returnable.' Kantamanto isn't just a retail market for Accra locals but the main transit point for used clothes sellers across West Africa. Traders from Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Nigeria and many other countries flock here to purchase obroni wawu to hawk back home. But far from sourcing fresh bales like Bamfo, they only pick out the items they can be sure of selling. 'The charities, third parties, the shipping firms, everybody is making profit, except the trader,' says Bamfo, exasperated. 'The trader has to bear the cost of everything.' What happens to the unwanted clothes is the next headache. While some unwanted textile waste is collected by waste management services, a lot is burned at the market fringes, while the rest is dumped in informal landfills. But so many tons of textile waste end up here daily that much simply gets blown into Korle Lagoon, the principal drainage channels for all Accra waste en route to the Gulf of Guinea. Leached water from textile waste in landfills contaminates groundwater with harmful chemicals and dyes, which can alter the pH and clarity of surface water. It's a phenomenon that has contributed to Korle Lagoon's reputation as 'the most polluted spot on Earth,' Ghana President John Mahama tells TIME with a weary sigh. Mahama says he's building a recycling plant near Korle Lagoon to safely process the mountains of valuable e-waste that also makes its way to the nation of 35 million. But when it comes to discarded fast fashion, locals are stepping up. Few people know Kantamanto better than Yayra Agbofah, as evidenced by the endless stream of cheery hollers and fist-bumps the 38-year-old receives as he weaves through its narrow lanes. The founder of The Revival NGO worked in Kantamanto as a young man to put himself through school. Back then it was still possible to find a few gems amongst the donated bales—end of line items by Alexander McQueen or Vivienne Westwood—that the budding fashionista could rescue, repair, and upsell for a small profit. But those days are long gone. 'Now, with the influx of fast fashion and now even ultra-fast fashion, things are getting worse for the traders,' Agbofah says. After seeing the blight of throwaway fashion on both Ghana's environment and the worsening hardships of Kantamanto traders, Agbofah founded The Revival in 2018 to upcycle unsellable textiles. Over the last two years alone, they've rescued 7 million garments from landfill, with the eventual aim to process 12 million a year. Two million garments have been recycled just through a partnership with London's V&A Museum, which sells jackets, kimonos, and bags produced by The Revival from landfill waste. When Kantamanto traders cannot sell their wares, instead of sending garments to landfill they can now bring them to The Revival, which pays a nominal fee. At the NGO's workshops inside the belly of Kantamanto, a small army of tailors then upcycle discarded clothes by fixing tears, piecing together different scraps to make bespoke items, and transforming bed sheets into skirts and blouses. Even tiny strips of denim are woven together to make hard-wearing rugs. 'Nothing goes to waste here,' says Agbofah. Agbofah says inspiration can come from anywhere. Ghana is the second biggest exporter of pineapples in Africa, but producing the fruit exposes farmers to insect bites, pesticides, and frequent cuts from the spiky fronds, which also tear holes in workers' clothes. So Agbofah designed hard-wearing overalls by stitching denim jackets and jeans together that are both long-lasting, protective, and, he says with a grin, 'fashionable.' So far, The Revival has donated 280 of these uniforms to local farmers. 'Our aim is to provide a set for all 8 million farmers in West Africa,' he says. But even with the most enthusiastic upcycling, so much fast fashion cannot be repurposed—discolored or torn polyester, or soiled underwear. Agbofah holds up a huge sack filled with U.S. Marine camouflage uniforms. 'They send us bags of this stuff,' he says with a shake of the head. 'Some even come with bullet wounds and blood stains.' While natural fibers like cotton, hemp, and wool are biodegradable, synthetic textiles like polyester, nylon, acrylic, and spandex can persist in the environment for decades or even centuries. The Revival NGO is investing in industrial machines that can turn textile waste into solid bricks for housing, thanks to a 200,000 euro ($235,000) grant from H&M Foundation's Global Change Award. Other than adding 20 more staff to the 16 currently employed, Agbofah hopes by October to be able to process 20 or 30 tons of fabric scraps a day into sustainable building materials. Agbofah's aim is to recruit his new staff from those same migrant women carrying 120-pound bales on their heads. 'We're bringing them on board and training them so they don't have to do this abusive work, which leads to a lot of spinal issues,' says Agbofah. Aside from simply providing employment, upcycling is also stimulating work, where individual tailors have the creative freedom to figure out what items might blend best together. 'We're trying to provide more dignified work that is better for their health.' It's not just Kantamanto workers who are suffering. Today, much of Ghana feels like it is drowning in other people's waste. According to Lancet Commission data, in 2015 pollution in the air, water and soil was responsible for 15.2% of all deaths in Ghana—double that of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco combined. Studies suggest the situation has only worsened since. Twenty years ago, Shatta Beach in Accra's Georgetown neighborhood was famed for its golden sand and mellow beach break—a family hangout scattered with sun parasols, beanbag chairs, and mellow Afrobeats drifting from palm-fringed bars. Today, the sand is almost completely obscured by a thick layer of plastic and textile waste. Brightly painted fishing boats are penned in by mountains of broken sandals, fabric scraps, and nylon sacking. It's so dense that waste collectors in hi-vis vests must attack the tangle with pickaxes before colleagues can cart chunks away. For when the tide takes garbage from the Korle Lagoon out to sea, it's just a matter of hours before the reversing currents carry it straight back to nearby shores. 'As well as cleaning up the beach, what's most important is finding the [fashion] label tags,' says Bright Gyimah, 19, who has worked clearing up Accra's beaches since last year. The focus on collecting the tags is so that NGOs and the local government can shame the fashion labels in an attempt to hold them responsible for the waste crisis. Indeed, many apparel brands and charities are increasingly cognizant of the issue and taking proactive steps to mitigate the scourge. It's not lost on Agbofah that by taking money from H&M that he is partnering with one of the pioneers of fast fashion. However, he says his early skepticism about 'greenwashing' has been assuaged by the manner of their engagement. 'I think they have genuine intentions for changing things,' he says. 'Because aside from the money, they also give you accelerator programs, connect you to the right people, help your processes, and make sure that you can succeed and scale.' Charities are also increasingly mindful of Ghana's woes. Oxfam GB, which says it earned $2.5 million for 2024/25 from all its recycling, says third-party partners are expected to remove any waste before export and to sort clothing to ensure that it is a suitable standard for local markets. 'We acknowledge that it's an imperfect and complicated system and we are striving to make improvements which reduce the potential impacts of this unsold stock on people and planet,' said a spokesperson. However, despite widespread acknowledgement of the problem, it continues to grow—owing partly to an increasingly affluent East Asia. Bales arriving from China are typically bigger and cheaper, says Agbofah, due to an abundance of rejected factory samples. 'The Chinese see the bigger business opportunity,' he says. 'They want to push out the U.K. and U.S. So it's getting worse.' The elephant in the room is, of course, Chinese-founded ultra-fast fashion phenomenon Shein, which has completely reshaped the global apparel industry, making $2 billion profit in 2023. The brand has been under the spotlight for worker rights, including revelations of child labor amongst suppliers, as well as the environmental impact of its super low-cost throwaway fashion. Still, Shein has recently been attempting to repair its image. Since 2022, the now Singapore-headquartered firm has been working with Ghana-based NGO The OR Foundation, which invested $4.2 million to promote a circular economy for textiles from July 2023 to July 2024. 'We acknowledge that more can be done by the wider textile industry to address the challenges associated with the end-of-life management phase,' a Shein spokesman tells TIME. Clearly, the Ghanaian government and activist entrepreneurs like Agbofah can only do so much. The impetus is also on apparel firms to produce higher quality products that don't fade or fall apart in months, as well as for consumers to wear clothes for longer, repair rather than discard old garments, and only deposit still wearable items into those recycling bins. Nations like Ghana are tired of being the world's dumping ground, although Agbofah is not naïve enough to want the containers to just stop arriving. His dream is to help seed a truly circular economy whereby his compatriots can safely, cleanly and with dignity turn garbage into gold. 'We're not trying to stop the importation of used goods, but we're trying to make it fair and better, where everybody wins,' says Agbofah. 'That can only happen if there is a connection between local traders and the source.' Write to Charlie Campbell at Solve the daily Crossword
Time Magazine
9 hours ago
- Time Magazine
The Race to Upcycle Africa's Fast Fashion Dumping Ground
We've all done it: dropped a bag of torn tees and threadbare shorts in the neighborhood recycling bin—or left it beside, as the container is typically overflowing—and walked away with a quiet satisfaction. Maybe even hit the shops afterward to restock your now depleted wardrobe. Our honest presumption is that these cast-offs will now go to help someone less fortunate—either sold by a charity shop, gifted to a homeless person, or sent overseas to clothe a refugee family. Sadly, this is often just fantasy. Much of today's used clothing—donated with good intentions—will likely end up in a landfill halfway across the globe, quite possibly off the West African nation of Ghana. In 2021, Ghana imported $214 million of used clothing, the most in the world, and it remains among the top destinations for discarded fast fashion today. In Accra, Ghana's sprawling capital, Kantamanto spans 42 acres and is purported to be the world's largest secondhand textile market. Each week, it receives 15 million pieces of used clothing, amounting to some 225,000 tons a year. If you can think of it, you can find it within Kantamanto's labyrinthine alleyways, which are piled high with used sneakers, bras, blouses, ties, belts, leather jackets, shoes, bags, and suit trousers. Clothes are predominantly sourced from Western charities, which sell donations in bulk to third are then shipped to Ghana from the U.K., U.S., and Europe—hence the local nickname of obroni wawu , or 'dead white man's clothes.' Pants are hung on a structure at a dump site at the Kantamanto market. Nipah Dennis—AFP/Getty Images Globally, consumers buy over 80 billion new apparel items annually—a four-fold increase from just two decades ago. It's estimated that some 57% of used clothing goes to landfills while a quarter is incinerated. On average, Americans each purchase 53 new items of clothing every year, though collectively toss out 17 million tons of clothing and textiles annually, some 65% of which is discarded within 12 months. However, this glut is increasingly supplemented by growing consignments from affluent East Asia. Every Thursday, new bales arrive on container ships into Accra port and are then distributed around Kantamanto's 15,000 stalls, typically by female migrant workers hailing from Ghana's impoverished north, who ferry these 120-pound bundles balanced on their heads in exchange for a wage less than $2 a day. Each bale comes with an origin country and rough description about the contents—jeans, leather jackets, sneakers—alongside an A-to-C quality grading, which in turn reflects the price charged. But purchasing these bales is a huge gamble, with traders estimating that some 30-40% on average is unsellable—stained or torn polyester, for example, or ragged undergarments. Wandering Kantamanto, TIME saw an abject jumble on sale, including cracked ski goggles, a lone toddler's toy boxing glove, as well as fleece-lined mountaineering boots (a tough sell in equatorial West Africa). Victoria Bamfo, 38, whose mother opened her family stall in Kantamanto over four decades ago, sells around four bales a week but says each is a high-stakes gamble. She speaks to TIME while inspecting her latest consignment of a 'grade B' women's blouses, which cost her 4,500 Ghanian cedis ($430) for the 170-odd pieces within. However, there's no guarantee she'll break-even—let alone turn a profit. 'Sometimes you might sell 90% of it; sometimes just 30%,' she laments. 'But then once you've bought the thing, it's not returnable.' Kantamanto isn't just a retail market for Accra locals but the main transit point for used clothes sellers across West Africa. Traders from Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Nigeria and many other countries flock here to purchase obroni wawu to hawk back home. But far from sourcing fresh bales like Bamfo, they only pick out the items they can be sure of selling. 'The charities, third parties, the shipping firms, everybody is making profit, except the trader,' says Bamfo, exasperated. 'The trader has to bear the cost of everything.' What happens to the unwanted clothes is the next headache. While some unwanted textile waste is collected by waste management services, a lot is burned at the market fringes, while the rest is dumped in informal landfills. But so many tons of textile waste end up here daily that much simply gets blown into Korle Lagoon, the principal drainage channels for all Accra waste en route to the Gulf of Guinea. Leached water from textile waste in landfills contaminates groundwater with harmful chemicals and dyes, which can alter the pH and clarity of surface water. It's a phenomenon that has contributed to Korle Lagoon's reputation as 'the most polluted spot on Earth,' Ghana President John Mahama tells TIME with a weary sigh. Traders spread out secondhand clothes for sale at the Kantamanto market. Nipah Dennis—AFP/Getty Images Mahama says he's building a recycling plant near Korle Lagoon to safely process the mountains of valuable e-waste that also makes its way to the nation of 35 million. But when it comes to discarded fast fashion, locals are stepping up. Few people know Kantamanto better than Yayra Agbofah, as evidenced by the endless stream of cheery hollers and fist-bumps the 38-year-old receives as he weaves through its narrow lanes. The founder of The Revival NGO worked in Kantamanto as a young man to put himself through school. Back then it was still possible to find a few gems amongst the donated bales—end of line items by Alexander McQueen or Vivienne Westwood—that the budding fashionista could rescue, repair, and upsell for a small profit. But those days are long gone. 'Now, with the influx of fast fashion and now even ultra-fast fashion, things are getting worse for the traders,' Agbofah says. After seeing the blight of throwaway fashion on both Ghana's environment and the worsening hardships of Kantamanto traders, Agbofah founded The Revival in 2018 to upcycle unsellable textiles. Over the last two years alone, they've rescued 7 million garments from landfill, with the eventual aim to process 12 million a year. Two million garments have been recycled just through a partnership with London's V&A Museum, which sells jackets, kimonos, and bags produced by The Revival from landfill waste. When Kantamanto traders cannot sell their wares, instead of sending garments to landfill they can now bring them to The Revival, which pays a nominal fee. At the NGO's workshops inside the belly of Kantamanto, a small army of tailors then upcycle discarded clothes by fixing tears, piecing together different scraps to make bespoke items, and transforming bed sheets into skirts and blouses. Even tiny strips of denim are woven together to make hard-wearing rugs. 'Nothing goes to waste here,' says Agbofah. Agbofah says inspiration can come from anywhere. Ghana is the second biggest exporter of pineapples in Africa, but producing the fruit exposes farmers to insect bites, pesticides, and frequent cuts from the spiky fronds, which also tear holes in workers' clothes. So Agbofah designed hard-wearing overalls by stitching denim jackets and jeans together that are both long-lasting, protective, and, he says with a grin, 'fashionable.' So far, The Revival has donated 280 of these uniforms to local farmers. 'Our aim is to provide a set for all 8 million farmers in West Africa,' he says. But even with the most enthusiastic upcycling, so much fast fashion cannot be repurposed—discolored or torn polyester, or soiled underwear. Agbofah holds up a huge sack filled with U.S. Marine camouflage uniforms. 'They send us bags of this stuff,' he says with a shake of the head. 'Some even come with bullet wounds and blood stains.' While natural fibers like cotton, hemp, and wool are biodegradable, synthetic textiles like polyester, nylon, acrylic, and spandex can persist in the environment for decades or even centuries. The Revival NGO is investing in industrial machines that can turn textile waste into solid bricks for housing, thanks to a 200,000 euro ($235,000) grant from H&M Foundation's Global Change Award. Other than adding 20 more staff to the 16 currently employed, Agbofah hopes by October to be able to process 20 or 30 tons of fabric scraps a day into sustainable building materials. Agbofah's aim is to recruit his new staff from those same migrant women carrying 120-pound bales on their heads. 'We're bringing them on board and training them so they don't have to do this abusive work, which leads to a lot of spinal issues,' says Agbofah. Aside from simply providing employment, upcycling is also stimulating work, where individual tailors have the creative freedom to figure out what items might blend best together. 'We're trying to provide more dignified work that is better for their health.' A customer purchases a bag from a luggage stall at Kantamanto market on Dec. 5, 2023. Ernest Ankomah—Bloomberg/Getty Images It's not just Kantamanto workers who are suffering. Today, much of Ghana feels like it is drowning in other people's waste. According to Lancet Commission data, in 2015 pollution in the air, water and soil was responsible for 15.2% of all deaths in Ghana—double that of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco combined. Studies suggest the situation has only worsened since. Twenty years ago, Shatta Beach in Accra's Georgetown neighborhood was famed for its golden sand and mellow beach break—a family hangout scattered with sun parasols, beanbag chairs, and mellow Afrobeats drifting from palm-fringed bars. Today, the sand is almost completely obscured by a thick layer of plastic and textile waste. Brightly painted fishing boats are penned in by mountains of broken sandals, fabric scraps, and nylon sacking. It's so dense that waste collectors in hi-vis vests must attack the tangle with pickaxes before colleagues can cart chunks away. For when the tide takes garbage from the Korle Lagoon out to sea, it's just a matter of hours before the reversing currents carry it straight back to nearby shores. 'As well as cleaning up the beach, what's most important is finding the [fashion] label tags,' says Bright Gyimah, 19, who has worked clearing up Accra's beaches since last year. The focus on collecting the tags is so that NGOs and the local government can shame the fashion labels in an attempt to hold them responsible for the waste crisis. Indeed, many apparel brands and charities are increasingly cognizant of the issue and taking proactive steps to mitigate the scourge. It's not lost on Agbofah that by taking money from H&M that he is partnering with one of the pioneers of fast fashion. However, he says his early skepticism about 'greenwashing' has been assuaged by the manner of their engagement. 'I think they have genuine intentions for changing things,' he says. 'Because aside from the money, they also give you accelerator programs, connect you to the right people, help your processes, and make sure that you can succeed and scale.' This aerial view of the Kantamanto market. Nipah Dennis—AFP/Getty Images Charities are also increasingly mindful of Ghana's woes. Oxfam GB, which says it earned $2.5 million for 2024/25 from all its recycling, says third-party partners are expected to remove any waste before export and to sort clothing to ensure that it is a suitable standard for local markets. 'We acknowledge that it's an imperfect and complicated system and we are striving to make improvements which reduce the potential impacts of this unsold stock on people and planet,' said a spokesperson. However, despite widespread acknowledgement of the problem, it continues to grow—owing partly to an increasingly affluent East Asia. Bales arriving from China are typically bigger and cheaper, says Agbofah, due to an abundance of rejected factory samples. 'The Chinese see the bigger business opportunity,' he says. 'They want to push out the U.K. and U.S. So it's getting worse.' The elephant in the room is, of course, Chinese-founded ultra-fast fashion phenomenon Shein, which has completely reshaped the global apparel industry, making $2 billion profit in 2023. The brand has been under the spotlight for worker rights, including revelations of child labor amongst suppliers, as well as the environmental impact of its super low-cost throwaway fashion. Still, Shein has recently been attempting to repair its image. Since 2022, the now Singapore-headquartered firm has been working with Ghana-based NGO The OR Foundation, which invested $4.2 million to promote a circular economy for textiles from July 2023 to July 2024. 'We acknowledge that more can be done by the wider textile industry to address the challenges associated with the end-of-life management phase,' a Shein spokesman tells TIME. Clearly, the Ghanaian government and activist entrepreneurs like Agbofah can only do so much. The impetus is also on apparel firms to produce higher quality products that don't fade or fall apart in months, as well as for consumers to wear clothes for longer, repair rather than discard old garments, and only deposit still wearable items into those recycling bins. Nations like Ghana are tired of being the world's dumping ground, although Agbofah is not naïve enough to want the containers to just stop arriving. His dream is to help seed a truly circular economy whereby his compatriots can safely, cleanly and with dignity turn garbage into gold. 'We're not trying to stop the importation of used goods, but we're trying to make it fair and better, where everybody wins,' says Agbofah. 'That can only happen if there is a connection between local traders and the source.'
