The Race to Upcycle Africa's Fast Fashion Dumping Ground

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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 parties.These 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 [e-mail].
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