WORN OUT — Part II: How African Governments Are Responding to the Textile Waste Crisis

WORN OUT — Part II: How African Governments Are Responding to the Textile Waste Crisis WhatsApp Image 2025 07 19 at 22.19.04

Western wardrobes don’t end in Europe or North America. They spill quietly, devastatingly onto African soil, packed into shipping containers and sold in open-air markets under the guise of “donations.” But from Accra to Kigali, Dakar to Lusaka, something is shifting. The bales keep arriving. The markets keep choking. But across the continent, a patchwork […]

WORN OUT: The True Cost of Your Donated Clothes

WORN OUT: The True Cost of Your Donated Clothes thrift1

Part I — The History of a Heap Kantamanto doesn’t sleep. It breathes, wheezes, and heaves under the weight of foreign fabrics. Bales arrive daily—tightly bound, often soaked in chemical stench or rainwater from cargo ships—marked “donation” in faded marker. They are not gifts. They are transactions. They are waste. And they are profitable for […]

WORN OUT: A Series on Africa and Secondhand Clothing

WORN OUT: A Series on Africa and Secondhand Clothing thrift1

A three-part Guzangs series on the secondhand clothing trade and the African economies absorbing it. An estimated 15 million used garments enter Ghana every week, most of them shipped from the UK, the US, and China, and a global secondhand trade now worth more than five billion dollars a year treats the continent as its […]

Waste Not, Wear More: African Designers and Artists Upcycle the Future

Waste Not, Wear More: African Designers and Artists Upcycle the Future From Dakar

As the global fashion industry reckons with its massive environmental impact, Africa is quietly leading a creative revolution — one where waste is not discarded but reborn. On this World Environment Day, we turn the spotlight to a growing community of African designers and artists transforming textile scraps, plastic, and secondhand clothing into vibrant works […]