From Voice Of America

Shaded by ragged squares of canvas, amid choking dust and the noise of hawkers, shoppers in Nairobi’s Gikomba market can turn up Tommy Hilfiger jeans or a Burberry jacket for a fraction of the price in London’s Regent Street or New York’s Fifth Avenue.

But there’s a catch: the clothes are all secondhand, discarded as worthless at charity shops or thrift stores in Europe or the United States and then shipped thousands of miles to another continent, occasionally in such pristine condition that an original price tag is still attached.

Kenya imports about 100,000 tons of secondhand clothes a year, providing the government revenues from customs duties and creating tens of thousands of jobs. It also offers quality clothes to Kenyans, many of whom earn less in a month what a pair of new Ralph Lauren khakis costs in the West.

To critics, the business raises the perennial problem of how Africa can build its own industry when it is flooded with cheap imports. But traders in Gikomba do not see it that way.

“It’s a source of employment,” said Clement Shuma from behind a pile of secondhand trousers – his speciality – that includes British brands like Topman and Next, and sometimes more internationally well-known labels like Levis or Benetton.

Read more at Voice Of America