“We’re Not the World’s Dustbin!” FashionGHANA Supports GAIA’s Fury Over Fast Fashion Waste Flooding Africa

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Fed-up Africans have slammed Western fashion giants for treating the continent like a rubbish dump — as mountains of secondhand clothes pile up in markets and landfills across the region.

Speaking on Zero Waste Day, GAIA Africa (Global Action Against Incinerator Alliance) dropped a bombshell statement revealing how textile waste from the Global North is wreaking havoc on local communities. They’ve branded the issue “waste colonialism” — and they’re not wrong.

According to Carissa Marnce, Africa Comms boss for GAIA, the fashion world is churning out a staggering 92 million tonnes of textile waste every year. And guess where a lot of it ends up? That’s right — dumped in African nations already struggling to keep up.

Take Ghana’s Kantamanto Market, for example. It’s drowning in an estimated 15 million garments each year, often called “Obroni Wawu” — literally “dead white man’s clothes”. And most of them? They’re so rubbish they get binned straight away.

“This isn’t charity — it’s trash,” said Desmond Alugnoa, GAIA Africa’s Programme Manager. “We won’t be the world’s landfill anymore.”

The group is calling on fashion brands to stop turning a blind eye. They want tougher policies, local investment, and real action from governments to stop this toxic cycle.

Jacob Johnson Attakpah of Ghana’s Green Africa Youth Organisation chimed in too, saying: “Even if our systems could handle this waste — and they can’t — it’s disgraceful that it’s happening at all.”

And Uganda’s Nirere Sadrach didn’t hold back either. He accused Global North countries of using secondhand clothes as a sneaky backdoor to dump waste in the developing world — while pretending to care about sustainability.

GAIA is now demanding an end to the madness — calling for circular fashion, responsible recycling, and a total rethink of how we treat clothes.

Because as they rightly say: “Africa is not your dustbin.”

FashionGHANA’s Stand Against Waste Colonialism

The Founder and CEO of FashionGHANA, Nana Tamakloe, has long been an outspoken critic of the secondhand clothing trade. Through FashionGHANA’s platforms, he has consistently challenged the unchecked influx of used garments from the West into Ghana, raising awareness of the damaging effects this has on the local economy and fashion industry.

In 2017, Accra Fashion Week boldly addressed the issue with a striking advertisement featuring a model triumphantly standing over piles of secondhand clothing, paired with powerful hashtags such as #BoycottFOS, #Boycott2ndHand, #BoycottImports, and #BuyMadeInGhana—a clear call to action for self-reliance and local support.

Nana took this message to an international stage in 2022 when he represented Ghana at the BRICS Fashion Summit. There, he openly declared that Ghana’s economy is being stifled by the overwhelming presence of secondhand imports. He later echoed these sentiments on Sputnik Radio, stating that the continuous dumping of Western clothing in Africa is not an act of charity, but a strategic form of economic sabotage—an idea also illustrated in a powerful prelude skit featured below.

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FashionGHANA remains committed to the fight against what has been rightly dubbed waste colonialism. It is a battle that demands urgent political attention, and one that must be addressed by the current NDC government and beyond.

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