Today, you still see Kampala fabric, as well as other traditional African textiles. But they are increasingly being replaced by cheap, secondhand Western clothing. Fast-fashion rejects arrive in Kampala by the barrel, decimating the local textile industry and harming the environment in their wake.

Nowhere in Kampala is this phenomenon more visible than at Owino Market, one of the largest secondhand clothes markets in the world. The sheer scale of it is awe-inspiring. You can walk around for hours, getting lost in alleyways lined with piles upon piles of clothes: Zara, Forever 21, Shein, and a few designer pieces buried in the heaps.

Men and women walk through with barrels of clothes on their backs, purchased from wholesalers. Those wholesalers, in turn, receive the clothes from charities that collect them through donation bins in Western cities.

I’ve used these donation bins many times—whenever I wanted to clear space in my wardrobe for the latest fashions. Giving my clothes away even helped ease the guilt of consuming when I knew it wasn’t necessary. “It’s for charity,” I would think, without examining too closely what happened to the clothes afterwards.

But now, seeing the tons of clothing—much of it low-quality, falling apart, completely wrong for the local climate, and destined to be burned in a landfill half a world away from where it was purchased—I finally understand what actually happens when you give clothes away.

You might think you have some statement pieces in your wardrobe, but trust me, they’ve got nothing on kanga, a type of fabric popular in East Africa. Kanga carries literal statements—printed with Bible verses, political opinions, and sometimes even village gossip.

Kanga is just one example of how textiles carry deep cultural roots and are often rich with messages and symbolism.

All of that is put in danger when barrels of cheap, ready-made garments flood the market. Local textile artists simply cannot compete with the low prices of secondhand clothes, and many families can no longer afford to spend extra on traditional fabrics for everyday wear.

As a result, demand for locally made textiles plummets. Artisans close shop. Skills that had been passed down for generations begin to disappear. With no incentive to invest in local production, countries become dependent on imported clothing, having lost the ability to produce their own.

Take Nigeria, where over 100 000 people were employed in textiles in the 1980s. Today, that number is less than 20 000, despite the population having more than tripled.

Of course, the secondhand clothes themselves bring jobs. That much was clear from Owino Market, where people work from dawn till dusk, carrying, sorting, fixing, and selling garments. But these are largely low-paid jobs that generate far less economic value than traditional textile manufacturing, and offer far less creative satisfaction for the people doing them.

When we talk about the environmental impact of fast fashion, we usually think only of what happens during production. For example, the fashion industry is responsible for 8–10 percent of global carbon emissions and 20 percent of all industrial water pollution. A pair of blue jeans alone takes 790 gallons of water to produce. Of that, 30 gallons are used for dyeing. This dyeing process often pollutes waterways with chemically contaminated water.

But if you follow the thread of fast fashion, you realize that the harm doesn’t stop once the garment is made.

In Accra, the capital of Ghana, the Korle Lagoon is bordered by a 20-meter-high cliff. It isn’t made of rock or sand, but of landfill, and 60 percent is unwanted clothing. As synthetic fibers disintegrate, they become microplastics that spread into the soil and the lagoon below, polluting what was once an important water source.

Meanwhile, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Dandora dumpsite is equally inundated with textile waste. Some of it is burned, releasing toxic fumes and exposing nearby residents to respiratory diseases and skin infections from the chemical-laden smoke.

This same pattern is playing out across African countries. Western countries send their waste, and local communities pay the price for our overconsumption.

The phenomenon is part of a broader trend known as “waste colonialism.” This term refers to the practice of wealthy countries exporting their waste, including plastics, electronics, and fast fashion textiles, to poorer nations.

Like all forms of colonialism, it involves wealthier countries exploiting poorer ones. The West benefits from lower waste-disposal costs and often weak regulatory frameworks.

Meanwhile, the Global South gets piles of discarded goods it didn’t ask for, environmental damage from the waste that can’t be reused, and an economy increasingly reliant on managing other people’s trash.