The boom in Ghana’s second‑hand clothing trade, locally dubbed “Obroni Wawu” (“dead white man’s clothes”), gives rise to a paradox: it is a booming economic engine that at the same time is eroding the very fabric (quite literally) of Ghana’s indigenous textile industry.
What began as shipments of donated garments from Europe and North America has grown into a multi‑million‑dollar business that sustains tens of thousands of Ghanaian livelihoods, even as it undercuts local tailors, weavers, and fabric producers.
According to the Ghana Used Clothing Dealers’ Association (GUCD), imports of second‑hand clothes surged to more than $300 million over 2021 and 2022. The United Kingdom alone accounted for roughly $150 million of that, followed by China at $82 million. At Kantamanto Market in Accra, the beating heart of this trade, up to 50 forty-foot containers of bales arrive each week, serving some 5,000 stalls in the city.
That volume translates into jobs. The second‑hand clothing ecosystem in Ghana directly or indirectly employs millions of people. GUCD estimates about 2.5 million people work along the chain, from importers and transporters to porters, bale sorters, stall‑owners, tailors, and upcyclers.
A socio‑economic study by OxEcon further estimated that around 43,000 informal workers in Ghana are directly linked to second‑hand imports from the EU alone. For many Ghanaians, Obroni Wawu is not just cheap fashion, it is a lifeline.
Yet this lifeline has a darker side. While the trade provides widespread employment, it simultaneously undermines Ghana’s textile manufacturing base. Traditional textile sectors such as weaving, hand-dyeing, kente, and batakari production have seen a dramatic decline.
Local historians and industry analysts note that decades of liberalised trade policies opened Ghana to deluges of cheap foreign fabric, making it nearly impossible for domestic producers to compete. Many younger artisans have abandoned ancestral crafts in favour of faster, more lucrative income by working in the second‑hand trade. Smaller factories have closed, and profits have shrunk for those who remain.
This imbalance is compounded by considerable waste. Reports suggest that 15 million garments arrive in Ghana every week, but as much as 40 percent of those bales are unsellable or of such poor quality that they’re discarded. Much of that waste ends up in landfills, clogging drains or washing into water bodies like the Korle Lagoon and coastal wetlands. This has raised serious concerns about the environmental and public health costs of a trade that appears prosperous on the surface.
That said, the Hindu economy does more than simply extract value. The trade supports entrepreneurial innovation: Ghanaian designers and upcyclers are increasingly repurposing used garments into locally relevant, value‑added fashion. NGOs and grassroots movements are also pushing back with cultural campaigns. The “Wear Ghana” initiative, promoted by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Arts, encourages citizens to embrace Ghana-made fabrics and craftsmanship.
But those efforts may not be enough. Local industry advocates argue that unless there is a concerted revival of Ghana’s textile manufacturing, including investment, skills development, and policy support, the second‑hand clothing trade will remain a double-edged sword. The economy may benefit in the short term, but the long-term cost may be the erosion of Ghana’s cultural heritage and industrial independence.
In the final analysis, Obroni Wawu illustrates a deeply complicated story: one of resilience, necessity, and economic opportunity, but also of imbalance, environmental strain, and cultural loss. For Ghana, the challenge will be to balance the livelihoods created by this trade with a meaningful revival of its textile tradition, so that a thriving second‑hand market does not spell the end of its homegrown craft.
