For many investors in the textile industry, it makes more business sense to import than to manufacture. Local manufacturing is hampered by the high cost of doing business and competition from cheap textile imports.
While second-hand clothes are seen as a threat, the Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya says the sector is a crucial part of the economy and offers millions of poor households access to affordable, quality clothing.
“The mitumba industry employs an estimated 10 per cent of the extended labour force, which translates to at least two million people,” chairperson Teresiah Njenga told the press last year, citing the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Manpower Survey.
However, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) says the benefits from a manufacturing-based economy far outweigh those of a trading nation. They believe it can employ up to 5 million Kenyans and reduce dependency.
MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE?
Trade and manufacturing have had a see-saw relationship. Kenya banned mitumba in the mid-1960s to protect the local industry, eased the ban in the mid-1980s to allow donations to refugees, and lifted it altogether in the early 1990s as world markets liberalised.
Local farmers stopped planting cotton because of poor prices, choking off supply of raw materials. Kenya had 52 textile mills at its peak in 1984 and half a million garment workers. Today, there are only four large mills and 54,000 employees in the value chain.
It is not a Kenyan problem. A 2015 study by the USAid found around 67 per cent of the population in East Africa purchased at least a portion of their clothes from used clothing markets.
In 2016, the presidents of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda resolved to ban the import of mitumba from 2019 to develop their domestic industries.
Kenya withdrew from that deal in 2017 after the US threatened to end its duty-free and quota-free exports to the American market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a critical forex earner.
The Covid-19 pandemic gave Kenya an excuse to suspend mitumba imports in 2020 “to prevent the spread of the coronavirus”. But the reprieve for local manufacturers only lasted five months before the mitumba trade bounced back with a bang.
Kenya is now the fourth-largest importer of used clothing in the world. It gets most of its supply from China, which accounted for 41 per cent of all mitumba imports in 2019.
The push for more reuse and recycling is gaining more attention as part of the global sustainability push
‘NOT A THREAT’
According to the Institute of Economic Affairs, mitumba is not a threat to the textile industry because Kenyans spend more on new clothes than on used ones.
Textile industry consultant Joseph Mosoti says stakeholders should come together to protect the positive sides of second-hand clothing, while building more transparency and accountability in the value chain.
“The push for more reuse and recycling is gaining more attention as part of the global sustainability push,” he said.
But some see this as part of a Western agenda. “If you look at the price list of garments at Walmart in the US, it is so low, it is encouraging excessive consumption. Why are we being told to be sustainable and not them?” asked Ajul Shah. He is the chairman of the KAM local textile and apparel sector.
Former Labour CS Kazungu Katana wrote in the Star in 2016 that, “Kenya is today a leading supermarket of products rejected in their countries of origin, in this case mitumba.”
For Shah, this is detrimental to development. “We never actually learn to make things ourselves. If we did, we would develop skills, like machine operators, designers and many more. Which is empowering,” he said.
It would also spur supplementary industries, such as making threads, buttons and the plastic accessories used to package shirts, which currently have to be imported, he said.
As for Kenyans spending more on new clothes, he said it is because they are more expensive, not because they prefer them to mitumba.
He said KAM is yet to meet with the mitumba lobby group to see if they can bridge the gap between their world views but welcomed the idea.