Rebuilding Africa’s largest second-hand clothes market
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ed Butler travels to Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana.
15 million used garments arrive in Ghana every week from all over the world - most ends up at Kantamanto but a lot can't be sold because it's in poor condition. That ends up as landfill.
Just weeks after Ed’s visit, a disastrous fire raised it to the ground, so he’s been back in touch with some of the vendors he spoke to as they try and get the market, and their livelihoods, up and running again.
Produced and presented by Ed Butler
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wow, look at the size of this place. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Ed Butler and you find me in Ghana today. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm in Cantomantu Market, which is the biggest second-hand clothes market in Africa. |
| 0:16.0 | It's here in Accra, in Ghana, shawls, jeans, shoes, t-shirts, hats, you name it, |
| 0:26.2 | ship from high-income countries in Europe and North America to here, dumped, basically. |
| 0:33.3 | Over 40,000 tons annually. |
| 0:35.7 | 40,000 tons every year. |
| 0:38.8 | Enough to fill up a stadium. |
| 0:42.5 | We have the name jacket that's short ones. |
| 0:46.0 | We have Zara, and they like Zara. |
| 0:48.6 | And we have Primac. |
| 0:50.4 | I will cut, I will shape it, so that they can take it away. |
| 0:54.9 | But is there a price to pay for all this stuff discarded by the rich world? |
| 1:01.3 | We're looking at about 15 million items of clothing being exported from the developed countries to Ghana every single week. |
| 1:10.1 | This is not recycling. |
| 1:11.5 | This obviously is dumping. |
| 1:14.0 | The pluses and minuses of Western clothing and other waste |
| 1:19.6 | arriving here in Ghana on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:33.2 | So this is Cantamante Market. |
| 1:48.0 | Row upon row these stalls with trousers, jeans and bales of second-hand clothes yet to be open piled up to the rafters of the corrugated iron roofs above my head all life happens here hi there are you selling well today yeah yeah by the grace |
| 2:00.0 | i have customers. |
| 2:01.8 | What's your name, madam? |
... |
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