Kenya

A well-intentioned law requiring separate textile collection in Sweden from 2025 could backfire by damaging reuse markets. By mixing worn clothing with textile waste, the new system may undermine existing global reuse chains that already support sustainability, jobs, and landfill reduction. Experts argue that without better collection design, circular fashion efforts risk serious setbacks.

An evidence-based comprehensive study that explores the future of Kenya’s clothing industry and creates a blueprint for uniquely African growth, concludes that the country’s second-hand clothing trade (Mitumba) and its local apparel manufacturing can coexist and complement each other.

The lesson of the current US tariffs crisis roiling the trade world is this: you cannot keep relying on one country as your export destination. From now on it has to be ‘US Plus One’.

Oxford Economics, leaders in global economic forecasting and quantitative analysis, has just published an exhaustive report on the state of the second-hand clothing trade between the EU27+ and three African nations. Johanna Neuhoff, Director of Economic Consulting, Continental Europe, delves deep into the nuances of the sector and the bearing it has on people on both sides in this free-wheeling conversation.

A report that analyses the socioeconomic impact of the second-hand clothing industry in the EU, the UK (EU27+), as also the three African countries of Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique, says that the sector generated a cumulative €3 billion of revenues in Europe alone in 2023.

One of the many African countries that has been repeatedly mentioned in the swathe of Western media reports about the impact of the second-hand clothing trade is Kenya. But the sector is huge in the country in its spread, and mitumba touches the lives of millions. Yet, the opinion of the Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya (MCAK) has largely gone unheard. The Chairperson of the MCAK, Teresia Wairimu Njenga, tells texfash that much of what abounds is misinformation.

Quite famously known as the ‘Green City in the Sun’, Nairobi has a bunch of students from its leading university figuring out an “incredible alternative” on how to use agro-waste, specially from maize—the principal staple food of Kenya—and pineapple, connecting the farming community to fashion in a way that both people and the planet not only survive but thrive.

A field research study has found that microfibres are ravaging the coastlines in the East African countries of Kenya and Tanzania. It also found that most of the microfibres came from natural fibres.

Two Kenyan textile manufacturers have received big-ticket investments with the aim to create jobs and improve lives through investing in sustainable businesses.

Under the guise of sustainability, the East African nation of Kenya has been rendered a favourite dumping ground of EU countries as they export millions of tonnes of ‘mitumba’ (secondhand clothes) which are mostly non-recyclable synthetic clothing too dirty or damaged to be reused.