The Land of “Dead White Man’s Clothes”
The Neocolonial Exploitation and Environmental Impact of Textile Waste on Kantamanto Market
Happy Monday Fashion Talk readers!
Today, we're diving into a critical issue that impacts not just the fashion industry, but the environment and livelihoods of millions. The article you’re about to read takes us to Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana—a once-thriving hub for secondhand clothing that has now become a dumping ground for Western textile waste. Through the lens of neocolonialism, this piece explores how the influx of low-quality, discarded garments is devastating Ghana’s coastlines, economy, and cultural identity.
How do our consumption habits in the West contribute to this crisis, and what responsibility do we hold in addressing it?
To unpack these pressing questions, we’re featuring an insightful article by Redeate Lemma.
Happy reading,
Amarissa
As you step onto the beach, you expect the soothing sensation of sand between your toes and the refreshing embrace of ocean water. Instead, your feet become entangled in heaps of soaked clothing, strewn across the shoreline. You make your way toward the water, only to find the ocean choked with miles of textile waste, rendering a safe swim impossible. This is the harsh reality faced by the people of Ghana—victims not of their own doing, but of Western greed and overconsumption.
The phrase 'Obroni wawu,' meaning 'dead white man's clothes' in the Ghanaian dialect Akan, encapsulates the deep frustration of a nation burdened by the discarded remnants of a distant consumer culture, one that has left their land, agriculture, and livelihoods in peril.
In Ghana, a relentless influx of donated clothes from numerous Western countries is funneled into Kantamanto Market in Accra, where they are sold to vendors struggling to make a living from these cast-offs. To westerners, these unwanted clothes are unsuitable for thrift stores or donations. High volumes of low quality fast fashion and synthetic garbage laments in the expansive second hand metropolis, transforming this once-vibrant hub into a sprawling dump for the West’s discarded goods.
About 40% of the clothing imported into Kantamanto leaves as waste. Some of it is collected by waste management services, some is burned, and the rest is abandoned in makeshift landfills, exacerbating the environmental crisis.
Ghana’s once-pristine beaches and thriving communities now lie buried under mountains of textile waste, resembling desolate, apocalyptic wastelands. By exploiting Ghana’s dependence on imported goods, Western countries are knowingly sustaining a modern form of colonialism that keeps their economies afloat at the expense of Ghana’s future.
The Final Stop for Global Secondhand Clothing
Kantamanto Market is the oldest and largest clothing resale market in West Africa. It spans over 20 acres of land in the heart of Accra, Ghana’s financial district. In 2021, Ghana became the world's largest importer of secondhand clothing, receiving the majority of garments from China, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Simultaneously, fast fashions prioritization of speed and profits over ethics and quality is causing Kantamanto market to overflow with cheap, damaged, and unusable garments. Torn hems, stains, busted seams, holes in the armpits… it all ends up here. Vendors at the market explain that the garments imported into Kantamanto begin as donations, however, charities often only sell roughly 10% of the clothing they receive. The rest goes on a journey of being bought and resold until the remaining 90% is accounted for, leaving the last buyer with the absolute bottom of the barrel.
The merchants at Kantamanto are those at the end of this tenuous supply chain. Buying clothing by the bale, unaware of the contents or quality inside.
When they open their already purchased bales of clothing and the garments are in such poor condition that they can't be resold, the options are limited. To avoid adding waste to overflowing landfills and existing litter, vendors have begun reworking damaged purchases into new products.
Drowning in Waste: Western Clothing Devastates Ghana’s Coast
The Ghanaian people are suffering the consequences of western actions. Nii Armah, a Ghanaian fisherman, casts his net out at Korle-Gonno beach to find himself catching heaps of clothing waste, instead of Barracuda. “Our nets are lost to the clothing from the markets,” says Armah. “The fish are slipping away…our sustenance”.
Justice Adoboe of the Ghana Water and Sanitation Journalists Network attests that unless repurposed, clothing waste is “mostly dumped indiscriminately because our waste management is not advanced; when it rains, floodwater carries the old garments and dumps them in drains ending up in our water and causing havoc to aquatic life”.
The local administrative council, Accra Metropolitan Assembly, spends around $500,000 a year collecting and disposing of Kantamanto Market’s textile waste. However, the Or Foundation, a non-profit fiercely dedicated to ‘escaping the predominant violent socio-economic system of corporate colonialism’, estimates that the local council can only handle around 70% of the market's overwhelming waste.
Ghana’s beaches are being eaten alive by waste, some mounds pilling over five feet high. The OR Foundation calculated an average of one “mass” of clothing, upwards of a thousand tangled items, for every three meters of coastline. Accra’s municipal officials expect a new landfill to cost upwards of $250 million. The possible solutions are convoluted and difficult to decipher given the varying consequences of the rise in scale of Kantamanto market.
Within Ghana’s population of over 34 million people, around 5 million are employed by or involved in the market in some form, whether it’s shipping, trucking, carrying, selling, reworking, repairing, or reselling clothes. Any significant steps taken to change the circumstances of the market would largely negatively affect those relying on the market for income and employment. However, for fishermen like Nii Armah, changes need to be made fast.
Economic Dependence and Environmental Degradation Mirror Ghana's Colonial Past
Neocolonialism—the use of economic, political, and cultural forces to control or influence other countries, particularly former colonies—is the most accurate lens through which to view the situation in Accra. Similar to colonial times, when African economies were structured around the extraction and export of raw materials to benefit western countries, the current trade of second-hand clothing creates economic dependence.
Ghana relies on their imports, while the profits gained from the second-hand clothing trade benefit Western exporters and intermediaries more than the local traders in Ghana, perpetuating economic imbalances. The environmental degradation occurring in Ghana mirrors the environmental exploitation that occurred during colonial times, when natural resources, people included, were extracted with no regard for psychological and environmental repercussions.
The Stop Waste Colonialism Organization recognizes the situation in Accra, Ghana transparently, as a dire outcome of colonialist actions. The term ‘waste colonialism’ was first recorded in 1989 at the United Nations Environmental Programme Basel Convention. Here, thirty five years ago, African nations expressed concern with the dumping of hazardous waste by high GDP countries into low GDP countries. Now, over thirty years later, these concerns have manifested into reality. What could have once been prevented, now demands urgent and costly remediation.
The land and the people are suffering hand in hand. Women and girls as young as nine years old head-carry 55 kg bales as they walk through the market. This work is quite literally back breaking. The weight of the bales often grinding together their spinal bones, causing serious back injury over time.
The Or Foundation works closely with a chiropractor in Ghana to treat these women. Their injured spinal chords, like the degraded oceans and beaches, are often damaged beyond repair. One girl who is only 16 years old, has been head-carrying second hand clothing bales for ten years, since she was 6. She sits down for an x-ray of her spine, as the doctor describes seeing the spine of a 60 year old woman in a teenage girl's body.
Conscious Consumption Can Dismantle Neocolonial Power
Kantamanto Market, although serving as a source of employment and economic stability for many, has created an ecosystem that resembles modern day slavery. The Ghanaian economy has been positioned to rely on western countries imports, fostering the continuation of neocolonial power dynamics.
The mass import of secondhand clothing into Ghana occurs with the full knowledge that any unsellable items will ultimately be left for Ghanaians to dispose of. This creates an environment that reinforces outdated Western perceptions of Africa as third-world, impoverished, and unlivable. The fight for equal rights is worldwide and ongoing, and true freedom means the liberation of all oppressed people.
The dire circumstances in Accra are a direct consequence of the hyper-capitalist culture that drives our relentless consumption. Overconsumption is not without consequences, those consequences are conveniently hidden from the view of Western consumers. Ghanaians reliant on their economy are not in the position to uproot the system they exist in and rely on. Those of us who pride ourselves as anti-racist, anti-colonialist, feminist, and overall activists, must turn our attention to the interconnected nature of neocolonialism and overconsumption.
Knowing better is the first step to doing better. By consciously educating ourselves, we can address the problem from its root, beginning to consume thoughtfully, intentionally, and with genuine consideration for the planet and humankind.
Contributing edits by our Summer ‘24 Student Writing Program editor , with final oversight by Amarissa.
Today’s writer…
Redeate is a participant in Fashion Talk's Summer 2024 Student Writing Program. Aligned with our mission to uplift emerging voices in the fashion industry, I’m excited to share her fresh and insightful perspective with our community.
Get to know her here.
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Thank you for this article. Let's hope that we can continue to educate ourselves and that it will one day bear fruit