Content uploaded by Andrew Brooks
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Andrew Brooks on Nov 17, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Riches from Rags or Persistent Poverty? The Working Lives of Secondhand Clothing Vendors in Maputo, Mozambique
Abstract and Figures
Secondhand clothing markets are a common sight in African urban centers. This article investigates the working lives of self-employed market vendors in Maputo, Mozambique. The secondhand clothing system of provision is discussed and the system’s effect on vendors’ ability
to profit from the secondhand clothing trade is explored. The valuing of used clothing depends both on how individual garments are culturally perceived and on their material use-value. Used clothes vary greatly in quality; some items are valuable fashionable garments whereas others are ripped
and soiled waste rags. Different vendors specialize in various types of clothing and accumulate expert knowledge as to how specific items are revalued in Mozambican society. Their businesses have been found to be precarious as they lack agency in influencing the provision of clothing stock
imported from the Global North and their ability to achieve profits is affected by the variable quality of used clothing items. This contrasts with other studies of the used clothing trade in sub-Saharan Africa, which have focused on the beneficial opportunities for upgrading livelihoods afforded
to those who are able to successfully embed themselves in used clothing supply chains. Furthermore, it is discussed how through their work activities impoverished Mozambican market vendors are entangled with globalization and how the market serves as a site for the expression of aspirations
and frustrations.
Figures - uploaded by Andrew Brooks
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Andrew Brooks
Content may be subject to copyright.
... The policy of bales remaining sealed until their final purchase in Zambia shifts the risks of unsaleable stock downstream to individual market traders, who "speak of this business as a gamble, a Pick-A-Lot, in which the outcome hinges on chance" (Hansen 2000, p. 161). More recent work (Abimbola 2012;Brooks 2012) shows the persistence of these asymmetries, their prevalence across the second-hand trade in Africa, and the precarity of the livelihood offered to market traders. ...
... SHCs are considered valuable clothing consumption alternatives since people in third-world countries are experiencing extended economic decline, poverty, and declining purchasing power (Brooks & Simon, 2012;Hansen, 2006;Mhango & Niehm, 2005). It is estimated that the United States exports more than half a million tons of used clothing every year, with African countries, such as Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, being amongst the top buyers of these second-hand clothes (Baden & Barber, 2005;Brooks, 2012;Manieson & Ferrero-Regis, 2022;Thompson & Peter, 2015). Because they are cheaper, simpler to wear, more durable, and more stylish than locally manufactured, SHCs have ready markets across the continent (Baden & Barber, 2005;Emefa et al., 2015). ...
The proliferation of environmental awareness and the growing recognition of the significance of sustainability has resulted in a new trend of retailers embracing secondhand reselling from unsold or unwanted inventories. Their numbers are increasing while also leveraging various business models, strategies, and procedures. This study uses a survey data of 154 responses from retailers of secondhand clothing across four cities in Liberia to evaluate the used clothing sector in the country. Findings from the survey highlight that while the SHC value chain encourages sustainable consumption, it is also a promoter of economic growth, particularly for developing countries emerging from war. Its retail growth potential is closely tied to the level of economic development geared toward supporting subsistence activities. Findings also show that respondents strongly oppose banning the importation of used clothes and the notion that secondhand undergarments pose health challenges. These findings are essential for providing business owners with understanding of the retailing process and how they can strengthen their foothold in the used clothing sector. They also emphasize the used clothing industry's significance in Liberia and create avenues for future research.
... Some of those not disposed of are sold to commercial SHC dealers. These SHCs are then sorted and categorized from luxury items and men's and women's garments to infant clothing (Rivoli, 2005), which are then loaded into containers and shipped to other parts of the world (Brooks, 2012). Due to the positive acceptance of consumers, SHC impacts the garments industry by shifting the global phenomenon of production for ready-to-wear and custom-made clothing (Hansen, 2010;Isla, 2013). ...
This paper aims to identify the antecedents of buying behavior for secondhand clothing among millennials, as well as to determine their underlying causal relationships. Upon a comprehensive literature search, a total of 18 antecedents were found, and these are categorized into three motives, namely, economic, hedonic and recreational, and critical. As a case study in the Philippines, a focus group discussion among experts who are active millennial secondhand clothing users and buyers were tasked to identify the antecedents they have experienced and further confirm those extracted from the literature. To establish the causal relationships of these antecedents, categorize them into net causes or net effects, and address the vagueness associated with the decision-making process, a fuzzy DEMATEL method is used. Results reveal that avoidance of conventional channels proves to be the antecedent providing the highest impact among all other antecedents. Uniqueness, high quality, and fashion trend found to be the antecedents with the highest impacts received, making them the major net effects. Findings from this work hope to provide a framework among practitioners that would lead to a better understanding of millennials’ buying behavior for secondhand clothing.
The fast-fashion business model is marred by high resource consumption and enormous emission of greenhouse gases. It is based on inaccurate forecasts, resulting in excess supply than demand. Globally, 85% of two-week-old garments end up as unfashionable or worn-out items that must be discarded as waste, disposed of for recycling, or donated to charities. With this colossal increase in textile waste, resource efficiency is one of the biggest challenges facing the fashion industry, which now calls for a swift implementation of a new sustainable business and consumption model to extend product life cycles. This demand for sustainable consumption encourages consumers to reuse, recycle and resell. The resell campaign known as second-hand clothing is a growing market worldwide. Current global forecasts predict a 185% increase over the next ten years, compared to FF, which will expand by just 20%. Africa is a top destination, with more than 80% of its population wearing SHCs. We contribute to this literature by assessing the significance of SHC trade in Liberia. We extend this assessment by developing a hybrid MCDM tool incorporating AHP, fuzzy logic, Ensemble, and TOPSIS to build a SWOT framework to identify criteria and sub-criteria for prioritizing SHC retailing in Liberia and Africa. Data for this study were gathered from a survey involving 100 SHC retailers from the Red-Light, Waterside, Duala, and Omega markets in Monrovia, Liberia. We identified several important factors in implementing sustainable SHC and recommended strategic directions towards their successful implementation.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mozambique (in 2017 and 2019) and China (in 2019), this paper looks at the ways that Chinese garments and textiles are presented and promoted as being fashionable in everyday business interactions in Mozambique. It explores how fashion is mediated in informal, South–South contexts that are largely detached from Euro–American fashion systems. Several different groups make use of their own specific strengths and advantages – be it access to capital and networks, long-term trading experience, business expertise, or an intimate knowledge of local tastes and trends – to sell Chinese-made clothes, shoes, and fabrics in Mozambique. These groups include Indian traders, West African individual traders, Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese textile companies, and since recently, young Mozambicans, including women, who see the availability and affordability of Chinese-made products as an opportunity to start their own businesses. These diverse actors partly complement and partly contradict each other in mediating the fashionability of Chinese-made products, while jointly constructing them as fashion. Through this unintentional co-construction, the groups selling Chinese-made garments and textiles in Mozambique carve out market niches for themselves, stimulate local dress culture, and diversify the way fashion mediation is understood, adding a South–South perspective to it.
Purpose – Studies on textile upcycling in Africa are rare, particularly in Liberia, where extensive
upcycling designs are appreciated throughout the country. This study aims to contribute to the
upcycling literature from the perspective of Liberia’s fashion upcyclers by assessing their coping
strategies and understanding the challenges confronting fashion upcycling in Monrovia’s four largest
markets.
Design/methodology/approach – A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis
(DEA) models were used to assess labor input, delivery and flexibility, technological and innovation
capability, financial capability, pricing of finished products, customer service and quality outputs of upcycled
fashions. The fuzzy inference system model assessed upcyclers’ loaning eligibility.
Findings – The results highlight that Liberia’s fashion upcycling is expanding with varying innovative
designs. The quality of upcycled fashions was deemed most important in the proposed AHP model. However,
many upcycling businesses lack sufficient capital to make long-term investments. With the necessary
investment, the innovation of these upcyclers could be a new line of fashion brands with great potential. In
addition, using a fair judgment in assessing the little loaning funds available is paramount to enhancing their
growth.
Research limitations/implications – Only 34 decision-making units were assessed. Future research
could expand this scope using other models with more practical loaning strategies.
Originality/value – This study presents a wealth of managerial and policy implications. The proposed
hybrid model is adequate for developing managerial decisions for fashion upcyclers. The proposed
framework can manage ambiguity, inaccuracy and the complexity of making decisions based on
numerous criteria, making it applicable in unearthing robust strategies for enhancing the fashion
upcycling sectors and other industries in developing countries. In addition, the proposed fuzzy Mamdani
system could also be extended to other sectors, such as agriculture, for a more transparent allocation of
resources.
The introduction and first chapter of The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact on Environment and Society, curtesy of Taylor & Francis.
Many of the economic transformations in Africa have been as dramatic as those in Eastern Europe. Yet much of the comparative literature on transitions has overlooked African countries. This 2002 study of Mozambique's shift from a command to a market economy draws on a wealth of empirical material, including archival sources, interviews, political posters and corporate advertisements, to reveal that the state is a central actor in the reform process, despite the claims of neo-liberals and their critics. Alongside the state, social forces - from World Bank officials to rural smallholders - have also accelerated, thwarted or shaped change in Mozambique. M. Anne Pitcher offers an intriguing analysis of the dynamic interaction between previous and emerging agents, ideas and institutions, to explain the erosion of socialism and the politics of privatization in a developing country. She demonstrates that Mozambique's political economy is a heterogenous blend of ideological and institutional continuities and ruptures.
Is Mozambique an African success story? It has 7 percent a year growth rate and substantial foreign investment. Fifteen years after the war of destabilisation, the peace has held. Mozambique is the donors’ model pupil, carefully following their prescriptions and receiving more than a billion dollars a year in aid. The number of bicycles has doubled and this is often cited as the symbol of development. In this book the authors challenge some key assumptions of both the donors and the government and ask questions such as whether there has been too much stress on the Millennium Development Goals and too little support for economic development; if it makes sense to target the poorest of the poor, or would it be better to target those who create the jobs which will employ the poor; whether there has been too much emphasis on foreign investment and too little on developing domestic capital; and if the private sector really will end poverty, or must there be a stronger role for the state in the economy? This book is about more than Mozambique. Mozambique is an apparent success story that is used to justify the present ‘post-Washington consensus’ development model. Here, the case of Mozambique is situated within the broader development debate. Joseph Hanlon is Senior Lecturer at the Open University and the author of ‘Beggar Your Neighbours’; ‘Mozambique: Who Calls the Shots?’; and ‘Peace without Profit’ (all published by James Currey) which have all made influential interventions in the development debate; Teresa Smart is Director of the London Mathematics Centre, Institute of Education.
This unique 2007 book is comprehensive both in terms of time coverage, from before the Pharaohs to the present moment and in that it tries to consider cities from the entire continent, not just Sub-Saharan Africa. Apart from factual information and rich description material culled from many sources, it looks at many issues from why urban life emerged in the first place to how present-day African cities cope in difficult times. Instead of seeing towns and cities as somehow extraneous to the real Africa, it views them as an inherent part of developing Africa, indigenous, colonial, and post-colonial and emphasizes the extent to which the future of African society and African culture will likely be played out mostly in cities. The book is written to appeal to students of history but equally to geographers, planners, sociologists and development specialists interested in urban problems.