What's fast fashion's impact on local economies?

Fast fashion has transformed how we consume clothing. A staggering 11.3 million tonnes of textile waste ends up in US landfills alone every year. 

This global fashion waste crisis has far-reaching consequences for the environment, economy and local communities. Sites which often appear like dumping grounds for unused goods can transform themselves into major sources of creativity and livelihoods. One such place is Kantamanto market in Ghana, a vibrant community and trading hub where waste is reimagined into beautiful, sustainable fashion. But Kantamanto is also a site of environmental hazards. 

On 2 January 2025, shortly after recording this episode, the market was hit by a devastating fire that has left over 100 shops and many livelihoods in ruins. It’s the latest of several incidents, and illustrates the complex and precarious nature of daily life in Kantamanto.  

This episode examines this reality in closer detail. Millions of second-hand garments are sent to Kantamanto from the West every week. Many are repaired, altered and resold by local businesses, whilst others are sent unusable, but at a cost to local traders.  

Guests dissect what we can learn from Kantamanto market about how fast fashion and consumer behaviour is impacting African countries. We hear about how to create a fairer, more sustainable fashion industry, and why it’s so critical the voices and realities of communities most directly impacted by fashion’s waste problem are at the heart of solutions.  

Guests 

• Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI Global
• Marta Foresti, Founder and CEO, LAGO & Visiting Senior Fellow, ODI Global
• Ekaette (Eka) Ikpe, ODI Global Board Member & Director, African Leadership Centre
• Yayra Agbofah, Founder and Creative Director, the Revival
  
  

Related resources

• LAGO Collective website: https://www.lagocollective.org/
  
  
• The Revival website: https://www.therevival.earth/
  
  Culture and the creative economy: https://odi.org/en/topics/culture-and-the-creative-economy/ (Resources hub, ODI Global)
  
  
• Under the tangerine sun: the creative economy in global cities: https://odi.org/en/publications/under-the-tangerine-sun-the-creative-economy-in-global-cities/ (Insight, ODI Global)
  
  
• Tensions and duality in developing a circular fashion economy in Kenya: https://academic.oup.com/cjres/article/17/3/577/7721557 (Paper, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society)
  
  
• Fashion designers as lead firms from below: creative economy, state capitalism and internationalization in Lagos and Nairobi: https://url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/lWrXCE92zc3qnonCBCkI7tf_Q?domain=journals.sagepub.com (Paper, Sage Journals)
  
  
• Can art and design change the world? (Think Change podcast, ODI Global)
  
  
• Creating our collective future: what the arts and design can do for development: https://odi.org/en/insights/creating-our-collective-future-what-the-arts-and-design-can-do-for-development/ (Insight, ODI Global)

Transcript

00:10 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano. Fast fashion has transformed how we consume clothing Since the early 2000s. Garment purchases have more than doubled, and yet they're worn 36% less than 25 years ago. And yet they're worn 36% less than 25 years ago. In fact, annually 11 million tons end up in landfills in the US alone and 80% of waste is discarded in manufacturing countries. But today we want to turn to Ghana, where 15 million second-hand clothing items arrive weekly from Europe, the US and Australia.  

00:45 

At the heart of this is the capital city, is Accra's Kantamanto market, which is often labelled as a dumping ground. But Kantamanto is more than that. It's a vital trading hub. It's a source of livelihoods since the 1950s. Kantamanto is also a place of incredible creativity and resilience. It's where waste is reimagined, garments are revived, they're remixed into beautiful, functional products. It's a vital part of Accra's vibrant creative economy. So as we address textile waste, we must consider its social and economic impact on importing countries, and in this episode we will explore Ghana's fast fashion dilemma and what a sustainable, inclusive solution could look like. And an ODI Global Visiting Senior Fellow and, last but not least, eka Ikpe, odi Global Board Member and Director of the African Leadership Centre at King's College London. Welcome to you all, yaro. Let me start with you. Tell us more about Kantamanto. Tell us about its history, the role that it plays in the city of Accra.  

02:00 - Yayra Agbofah (Guest) 

Okay, great Thanks for the question, Kantamanto. I mean, for me, it's my favorite place. It's a whole community and it's a place where so many people which has built livelihoods but also been able to create a certain community, where people feel a part of it's a whole ecosystem on its own, with about 30,000 traders, where majority are women, and these are a group of people who are trying to keep clothes in circularity, and these are clothes that we didn't even consume right from the factory. These are used clothing that are imported from the global north, and it's an ecosystem of retailers, ecosystem of repairers, tailors and also kaya ye, and when I say kaya ye, I mean these are ladies that carry the bales, which is the kilos of clothing from the warehouses to the retail stores, on their heads, and this you know, sometimes it's about 55 kilos on their heads, and this is a collection of different skills and expertise that are in this market. Now, one favorite thing about this market is the fact that it's a space where creativity thrives.  

03:25 

A lot of people in the market tap into their creativity to make use of these clothes that most of them, like the majority of them, are not sellable, of which some you know are in really, really bad condition. I think about. You know, 40% out of this 15 million between 20 to 40 is waste, and what that means is that these items are unsellable according to what the demand is in the community, in in Accra and in Ghana, and so there is no, there's no resources for us to actually deal with these textile waste, and I have been working in the market, been going to the market, for the past two decades, so then I've been there in different capacities and understand the different levels and disparities in the market. Now these items that leave the market that come as waste. We pay for everything. Nothing is free. Every single piece, whether sellable, unsellable, whether it's waste, it's not waste every single penny is being paid.  

04:48 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

So you're an advocate for conscious consumption right in your organization, as you're saying is, you know, tries to educate, create awareness, create arts and jobs. You know, with this, upcycle textile waste from the global north and clearly you know you are trying to use, you know, this second hand clothes in the best possible way, but you say you still have to pay. You know, even when the stuff is unsellable, how do you work with the local communities in the market? I mean, what is the process of engagement?  

05:16 - Yayra Agbofah (Guest) 

So I mean the community. I work in the market, also as a retailer at some point. So then the approach, you know, revival came out, as you know, as a result of frustration. I got frustrated, but also a lot of my colleagues, retailers, who were there, also got frustrated because of the fact that the business aspect of it was not as viable as it used to, because they are paying for things they're not able to sell, which makes them incur debts, debts. So then I was, you know, also felt the same thing, because this is all based on experience, and decided to look into and look into it properly, and that's what triggered my research and then saw the whole issue with the landfills and the oceans, how much pollution is creating, and then figured out that, okay, there's something needs to be done about it, because nobody is trying to help us, nobody's trying to create any alternatives for us to deal with this from the business and environmental aspect of things.  

06:15 

So hence we as a community come together to tackle the problem on our own, and that is where we decided to position ourselves in the intersection between the market and then the landfill or the oceans, where we divert their clothes from going there and keep them in the market and keep them in circularity through upcycling and design, working with the community. So, literally, the scale of, you know, upcycling has been existing already in Kantamanto. This is something we've been existing already in Kanto Mantu. This is something we've been doing already. What we're doing, what the revival is doing, is just to use that same scale to keep clothes in circularity, but also improve their scale and make the people in the market aware of this amazing thing they are doing by fostering circularity and through this we're creating jobs. Through this we're creating art and trying to change the narrative of this waste to be a resource and not an element of pollution.  

07:18 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Well, Marta, you visited Kantamanto recently. You were there as part of the Africa-Europe Mayors Dialogue and wrote a social media post about it, called the Beauty and the Beast. What do you mean? What was your experience?  

07:30 - Marta Foresti  (Guest) 

My experience, which is very much the experience of a non-expert right, I don't work on circularity, I'm not an expert on textile, but I suspect, like many others, I had expectations about this place because I've seen so many pictures you know on and so many campaigns of they try to tackle fast fashion, and so I had in my eyes the piles of clothes, the piles of clothes on the beach polluting the ocean. So I was very much expecting the beast. I was expecting, you know, a pile of rubbish. Much expecting the beast. I was expecting a pile of rubbish. I was expecting a dump, a dump in a cielo aperto, we say in Italian, so a dump in the middle of a city, in open sky. I was expecting the beast. I was expecting the rubbish. I was expecting all sorts of images and concepts that relate to waste and to things that we don't care for and all the guilt and the problems that that creates.  

08:31 

I was not expecting the beauty that Yaira talked about. I did not expect to see so much trade going on in this market. I did not expect to learn that this market has been going on since 1950. And so, as a non-expert in waste, but as a researcher with a curious mind, I wondered if something has been going on since 1950. Clearly there is something, you know, there are some economic interests around this market that is really important to understand. There is actually a community of traders whose livelihoods depend on this market, and so it really struck me almost immediately as an example where very well-meaning attempts to you know, to raise the real, very tangible problem of the effects of fast fashion and dumping of second-hand clothes has in places like Africa, but also Chile and other places in the world, has in places like Africa, but also Chile and other places in the world. You know, the well-meaning attempts to address this problem risked overlooking spaces for solution, which I happen to think is a very recurrent problem in a lot of development thinking.  

09:38 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Eka. The numbers about the dumping of waste globally are shocking, and one thing to stress is that unregulated landfills release harmful greenhouse gases like methane as organic waste decomposes. So these emissions pollute the air and they contaminate water sources. So the economic damage from these emissions could reach billions of dollars, and we know that the cost is expected to double every decade from 2025 to 2060. So can you tell us how big a problem is dumping of second-hand clothing for African economies and why so much focus on Ghana? How does Ghana compare to other countries? Because it seems to be very prominent in Ghana but less so elsewhere.  

10:22 - Eka Ikpe  (Guest) 

No, thank you so much for that. I think the reason it's so prominent, why we're talking about it talking about it with reference to Ghana, but other parts of the African continent is because African countries actually are among the largest net importers of second-hand clothing globally. The top importers on the continent are Ghana, nigeria, kenya and Tanzania. I think Ghana is the largest, but a country I've worked on with regard to this issue, this challenge, is Kenya, and in 2021, kenya was the second largest African importer, but the fifth largest global importer, and the volumes or the value we're talking about is about 169 million US dollars. So we're talking about is about 169 million US dollars, so we're talking about huge sums here.  

11:08 

Something I do want to note is, of course, we're focused on this issue in this moment, but, in reality, this what we see, this sort of trade movement, this pattern is actually rooted in a long-standing practice extractive trade practices. So you think of the work of Walter Rodney, where he reminds us that Europe has been dumping goods that could not be sold locally, including old sheets, cast-off uniforms, technologically outdated firearms, for example, and in fact, on the question of firearms, you can think of another related issue, which is technological waste coming from Europe to, especially, west African shores. So the challenge we're then faced with is how this is heavily influenced by longstanding extractive trade patterns. So it's difficult to extricate this as a standalone issue from a wider challenge issue from a wider challenge. Nevertheless, I think what we've heard from Yara here, and from Martha, is that what we're seeing and what we're witnessing is that, despite this innovation, this incredible innovation, this beauty that we've heard about, there is a hierarchy at the heart of this.  

12:21 

What's ending up on African shores is determined mainly by consumption and production for Europe, and also a little bit, increasingly, from China as well, and it's not determined by African needs or African consumption, right.  

12:35 

So there's a tension between this incredible innovation and the coloniality that underpins this trade flow. So, thinking of some of those we've worked with in my own work, my collaborative work with colleagues, where we think about these large volumes of second-hand imports that, as you noted, end up in landfills and cause all kinds of major environmental and economic challenges, some designers actually noted that these inflows were a source of direct competition for their own domestic fashion brands and, in part, this stance was informed by a challenge or an inherent inability to be able to compete on a price front with this lower priced input. I do want to note that some others actually responded and expressed that they actually coexist with second-hand clothing markets. They didn't see this as a major challenge for them. Now, part of what informs, I guess, these differences is the sort of demographic or socioeconomic standing of the consumers that these various business actors are targeting. Yeah, and you see the tensions around that.  

13:56 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

But yeah, the Royal Academy of Engineering estimates that around 70 to 80 percent of municipal solid waste in African cities is actually recyclable, but it's often not kept in a circular economy. If it were, it actually could be worth about $8 billion per year. So what do you think are some effective solutions to keep this waste in the circular economy for the traders or the market and the communities around it? You know you refer to some of that earlier, but also what are the challenges?  

14:31 - Yayra Agbofah (Guest) 

Well, the major challenge, I think, is the way it's being produced, it's the material composition of these wastes. They make circularity very difficult. Example is polyester, which is full in fast fashion on a super fast rate, actually, now we have ultra fast fashion now, and they are dwelling on synthetic fabrics, and these fabrics make recycling, upcycling, even downcycling, very, very difficult. So then, the challenge lies in the whole process, from the start, from the design perspective to the product itself. Now, there are opportunities from the design perspective to keep this closed in circularity, but then it has to do with a lot of thinking, but also it also gives a way to tap into creativity to get this closed, keep this closed in circularity. But the main thing is how it starts from design. How it starts from design. It starts from the decision on what products you want to bring out there, what's the relevant and how this product is going to impact environment and people.  

15:49 

Now, the fashion industry is all about profit over planet, profit over the environment, which is what has gotten us into this mess that we find ourselves in.  

16:01 

So, then, the narrative has to change. The business model in the fashion industry needs to change, but while that is being worked on if hopefully it happens the existing materials. The understanding of what's existing right now is that we should see those existing materials as a resource. And that will influence our thinking with what we're doing in Ghana is that we we treat every wasting that we, every waste product that we um divert from landfill as a resource. So, for example, winter clothes that have been sent to Ghana, which is functional, hence it becomes waste. We try to keep it in circularity by making it functional. For example, it's to turn into a backpack, even though it cannot be used as a jacket in Ghana, but it could be used as a backpack or a laptop sleeve. So these are some techniques, from a design perspective, that we use in keeping these clothes in circularity, but I think, on a bigger scale, the fashion industry, processes and the business model needs to change.  

17:07 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Yeah, and to do that it can't be left to the community. Right, we need the governments to come in. I mean, the governments must step up to upgrade inadequate waste management infrastructure. They need to increase financing. They need to strengthen regulatory frameworks, right frameworks, to ensure that the creative economic sectors are actually not stifled as a result of this dumping. How can we enable that? How can we make sure that governments can?  

17:37 - Eka Ikpe  (Guest) 

really do that. Thank you very much for that. I want to, if I may, begin by agreeing with Yara some of the points he's made here, that actually in our work as well we do see this. We see how producers, fashion producers, fashion designers exercise agency and show leadership and show innovation. How they source, you know, use these second-hand clothing imports as a source for new design, for example, source of inspiration. How they upcycle this, how they use this for textile development, creating brand new textiles. So there's, you know, really high levels of innovation here and look for ways to deploy these goods within these markets. So really making a really difficult, challenging situation make sense within these contexts. But we also hear from them about what they need to make the work. They do go forward, move forward, and that's both in terms of how they reuse second-hand clothing but more widely, how they operate as creative producers in a space that can be quite harsh to you know the work that goes on in cultural production and in creative production as well. One thing that comes up is around providing infrastructural support. So, for example, thinking about small scale production units, because many of these producers work on a smaller scale and they recognize that actually carrying out certain activities by themselves is not the most efficient way to move forward, and collaborating and working as a collective would be more useful. So that includes investment in the infrastructure that would support that, but the kind of training that would also enable this more collaborative approach to work.  

19:39 

Something about the magnitude of the volume of finance. But it's interesting in speaking to designers, the other things they mention about finance. At times they're actually financial instruments, but the extent to which, uh, they're suitable to the work that designers and fashion producers uh, take on can be a challenge. So, for example, the, the uh, the term of the finance that's that's available. So finance being available on too short a term, finance being made available that doesn't take into account the capital needs of creative producers, is another challenge. Actually, education around or training provision to enable some of these producers access the finance available was a very key and interesting point that came up. So quite often we're hearing that there are pots of finance in places. Accessing that finance can be the major challenge that they have to deal with. Other points they also raised were around trade facilitation right, both in terms of accessing inputs but also for export activities that they might want to be inputs but also for export activities that they might want to be engaged in. I think another factor we have to think about, so it's what government tries to do.  

20:46 

So at times, governments put in place really important policies to address this scourge of second-hand clothing.  

20:54 

And what comes to my mind is the work that went on in the East African community, where they got together to say, actually, this is stifling our domestic industrial sector, this is stifling the production of textiles and of clothing domestically, and they agreed that they were going to stand up to those who are really fueling this trade and to say no more.  

21:19 

And what ended up happening was the US government insisting that if the EAC governments did not continue to accept this inflow of second-hand imports, they were going to then rescind their access to the African Growth Opportunities Act, which is very important for certain African economies in terms of getting access to US markets for their goods. And in the end, the only economy that stood up to the US government on this was Rwanda. The other governments had to capitulate to this. But we know Kenya is, you know, this is a larger problem for a country like Kenya and a country like Tanzania. So we need to think about, you know, these larger structural issues that these countries by themselves will be unable to resolve. You know, we really need to think of how we tackle the structural issue and the coloniality of this through these sorts of measures.  

22:14 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

And these are the kind of big problems and really structural issues that we often don't tackle or focus on as a development community, you know, we tend to focus a lot more on the flows of aid rather than thinking how to challenge, you know, this deep and still colonial um structures deep in accord with the colonial structures that you refer to, eka and part yeah, part of this, of course, is also shaping the right narratives, and, mata, you obviously work a lot on narratives around development and migration.  

22:43 

How can we shape a narrative that really helps people understand? You know how deeply problematic this dumping is.  

22:53 - Marta Foresti  (Guest) 

Thank you, and actually thank you Sara and Yaira and Eka, because, in a way, the conversation that we are having right now is a perfect example of where the challenge of narratives and the stories we tell you know becomes clear because, at the same time, we need to, you know, we really need to pay attention and recognize the realities of a very clear problem that creates very negative outcomes for communities and for countries that are not asking for it and in fact has, second, as Eka just explained, has further damaging and stifling the prospects of local development.  

23:29 

There is clarity in the story about how fast fashion and particularly, as Yaira said earlier, the current composition of the ultra fast fashion and the fibre impossible to recycle, create in terms of environmental hazards.  

23:42 

Sometimes I feel that when we talk about stories and narratives, and particularly when we're trying to to create, you know, simple stories that you know are meant to get consumers to think about their behaviour, we lose a little bit the sense of the balance between the big and the small in this. In this, because there is no doubt that there are these very big structural problems that need to be addressed, the ones that Eka highlighted and, at the same time, there is no doubt that in the lifetime of me, probably, yaira and others, there will continue to be the need to find ways to make the trading in that particular space in the Kantamanto market in Accra, at the very least to create some decent livelihoods for the traders in the market and prospects who keep in circularity some of those clothes so very practically so long as somewhere like Jaira receives winter jackets from Europe, the fact that they're able to turn that into useful backpack or synthetic materials that they can't use, or synthetic materials they can't use.  

24:46 

Turning those into backpack and laptop sleeves, whilst being nowhere near the structural solution that we need, is still very much part of what needs to happen and what needs to be supported and expanded. And so, in a way, the challenge around narrative is to keep those two things, almost like these two balls, in the air in a way that persuasively can get my kids to think differently about the way they consume. And my worry about a lot of the dominant narratives about waste and fast fashion is that it might not land and I seen it happening on migration but trying to bang on about, you know, the positive effects of migration and trying to get people to think differently has yielded no results if we don't try to really, you know, get to a proper understanding and how these issues affect people's lives. I was actually thinking, in terms of the stories we tell about fast fashion, that for me, hearing from Yaira, it is very simple fact. So stories with a small s that every single item that the trade is in the market um, you know, want to either recycle or resell needs to be bought, and so this idea that what people think they're donating for charity actually gets sold on to community as an. Actually they pay for something where there is a high chance of not being able to use it is the kind of a small story that is really worth telling to people who are tempted tomorrow to go to their local charity shop and just drop outside their windows a bag of a bag of clothes.  

26:11 

Similarly, as I said, these issues of the market being around since the 1950s, so much of the stories we tell focus in the on the, what you know, the, the amount. You know the big amount. You know the big amount of ways, the, how long and how long this has been dealt with and how is very interesting for people to understand, to begin to relate to. I struggle to get my 13-year-old son to you know, to understand why those very attractive cheap goods from Shane are not a good idea. And, interestingly enough, attractive cheap goods from Shane are not a good idea. And interestingly enough. Interestingly enough is only when he saw on TikTok a video that talked about the working conditions of the people in the factory Shane, he became very aware and worried about the consequence of what he was doing. You know, to sort of the story of the dumping, of fast fashion in and of itself did not go far enough.  

27:01 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Thanks, marta. So shaping the right narratives is important. We need to close. I just want to hear from Eka and Yara what do you think your recommendation to our listeners about changing behaviour or influencing change? What should they do? Eka?  

27:17 - Eka Ikpe  (Guest) 

Yes. So I want to draw on what Marta said as well. I think we can hold many things to be true at the same time and we need to open ourselves, our minds to complexity. For me, what's at the heart of this and you know I'm one of those that harps on about that larger issue the coloniality of all of this. Because what I guess what I place at the heart of all of this is who is at the centre of a lot of what we're discussing or what we're dealing with.  

27:48 

So Yair has shown how, despite these challenges, you can place Africans at the centre of the solution to that, and that's very critical as we think of solutions, the challenges with the coloniality of this whole endeavour and even the narration around circular economies that thinks of a circle and thinks of folks in global North context as being at the centre of that circle, is problematic because of who is located at the centre and, I think, a lack of honesty about who is at the centre in that moment. So for me, I'd like to see a situation where we can explore a range of centres where we can, we and we can be conscious about who, you know what groups we're placing at the centre when we're having some of these conversations, what groups we're provincializing when we're having some of these conversations, and how that complicates how we move through some of these debates and the potential solutions around this. And, as we observe the wonderful work going on here, what does that offer us in terms of narratives, in terms of language, in terms of concepts about how we resolve this? I think we cannot leave to one side the structural issue. Right, that has to be, you know, tackled head-on and we have to hold folks accountable to addressing that. Otherwise, we are just offloading all these problems and asking people to show us this innovation, you know, based on the actions of people that are so far away from their own reality and actually don't have them in mind in any way, shape or form.  

29:26 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Yayra?   

29:28 - Yayra Agbofah (Guest) 

I totally agree and would just like to add a bit more to Eka's take on that. I think it's very important to and for me, I'm very happy to see that in recent time we are being involved in conversations. Our voices are being heard. We're being given that opportunity because I think nobody can tell our story better than us in the problem, and for us it's very important to let the world know actually what is really happening on the ground from an experiential point of view. So thank you for giving us this platform and I really want to thank Marta for also giving us this platform to actually speak and directly tell the story.  

30:17 

The second-hand market it's a great place in Ghana. If you want the cool stuff, you go to Kantamanto Market to get the cool stuff. But and we don't want the market to stop I mean, for us at the Revival, we're not looking for a ban on second-hand, we want the system to be better. We're looking for a second-hand system that is fair, that is just and that everybody gains, not just one part gaining and the other part losing. No, currently everybody in the chain is making money except the retailers, and that is not fair. So we're looking for a better system where everybody wins, and also the fact that when such conversations are being had, we should be involved in a decision-making process in the policies, because the best solutions for a problem lies in the people who are experiencing the problem. So then it makes absolute sense for us to be in there and for the consumers and people in the audience watching. I think it's important for you to know this information it's way overdue, but it's not too late. Important for you to know this information it's way overdue, but it's not too late that when your actions, actions that people take in the global north has a ripple effect on us in the global south, and that we should always take into consideration our actions and how it's going to affect somebody somewhere else.  

31:40 

When you want to donate clothing, charity is giving help to somebody that needs it. But if you're going to take your clothes that are torn in the background, that are dirty, and take it to a charity shop that you're going to donate, this it's dumping and you expect us in Ghana or in other parts of Africa to wear this, to wear your used underwears, torn, faded clothes. It doesn't make sense, it's not right. So if you want to donate, fix it, clean it up. The stuff should be in good condition. Put yourself in our shoes and say this thing I'm donating, would I wear it if I'm in the shoes of somebody in in ghana or in kenya or uganda? You need to ask those questions before you drop these things in the collection being or you drop it in the charity shops, so that we will get good stuff that we could sell and make money from it.  

32:36 

We cannot be buying stuff we cannot make money from it. We cannot be buying stuff we cannot make money from. We cannot be buying clothes that we cannot be making money from and in care debts. That is wrong. That doesn't make sense. So then, let's be more cautious about what we donate and think about who is going to use it, and we should be conscious about consumption. I think it's obvious. I mean Black Friday. I'm sure a lot of people are looking for it to buy. You're getting 70% discount, 50% discount, but you don't need it. At the end of the day, you're going to just look at it and not even use it. But when you throw it away or you give it out, it's out of sight. Problem solved for you here in Europe, but then the problem starts for us in Africa.  

33:25 - Sara Pantuliano  (Host) 

Eka, Marta and Yayra. Thank you so much for highlighting how this global issue of fast fashion impacts Africa and particularly Ghana. I'm so inspired by the creativity and the resilience of the people in Accra that you've been describing Really their ability to transform second-hand clothing into these beautiful, innovative designs and textiles. But, as we discussed, while fast fashion provides some vital economic opportunities, it clearly poses challenges such as waste pollution, competition with local garment makers. So, in this sense, balancing economic opportunities with environmental and social responsibility is essential. But this requires governments to support local industries with accessible finance, with training, promoting sustainable consumption, addressing exploitative colonial trade legacies as we've heard from Yayra, and really enabling those most impacted to shape the solutions, and really enabling those most impacted to shape the solutions. Ultimately, I think we all need to prioritize the global and local impacts of our actions and help create a fairer, more sustainable fashion industry. So I hope this conversation inspires reflection on how each of us can contribute to this. As always, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and until next time, thank you for listening.