Accra, Ghana – The sound of hammering and drilling reverberates across unusually empty stalls of Ghana’s Kantamanto – known as the world’s largest second-hand clothes market – as contractors erect new shops propped by wooden beams in an area completely destroyed by fire. 

On January 1, a fire ripped through Kantamanto in what locals describe as Accra’s worst blaze since 2013, killing two people and destroying thousands of market stalls overnight. The market, home to around 30,000 Ghanaian vendors, was left in ruins.

Although reconstruction is nearing completion, business at Kantamanto has yet to return to normal.

Around 8,000 Ghanaian vendors have been left struggling to make ends meet to replace stock painstakingly purchased with life savings, after the New Year's day fire destroyed around 60 percent of the market. 

Most retailers lost thousands of dollars in merchandise as the country faced its worst economic crisis in decades.

“We were just asleep. We woke up, and everything was just burned down. We don’t know how the fire started,” says 35-year-old Godfred Antwi, a vendor who has worked in Kantamanto for the past 15 years. 

The Revival, an NGO that upcycles and recycles clothing from Kantamanto’s textile waste, estimates that over 2,500 shops were destroyed.

A handful of gowns – including a white bridal gown with a voluminous tulle skirt – hang mournfully from a wooden pole of Antwi’s new shop. He lost thousands of dollars of second-hand women’s wedding and party dresses. 

“We lost everything,” he tells TRT World.

Like many Ghanaian vendors, Antwi had already taken out loans – from the bank and from individuals – to buy his previous stock, and again to finance his new stock and rebuild his stall in an already fragile economic climate.

Despite being Africa’s biggest gold producer and the world’s second-biggest cacao exporter, Ghana has record levels of public debt at around $50 billion dollars. 

The same year, Ghana defaulted on its debt and its currency sharply devalued even as inflation hit a record 54 percent in December 2022. Ghana also received a $3bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout in 2024 – its 18th IMF programme since the country gained independence in 1957.

“They are coming for their money, but we don’t have money now,” says Antwi, alluding to his financiers. “Right now, we are struggling to pay bills.”

‘Dead white person’s clothes’

Kantamanto is the largest reuse and upcycling economy in the world, reselling or adding value to some 25 million secondhand garments exported by the Global North every month, according to the US-Ghanaian non-profit, the Or Foundation. 

“Buy something. You’re the reason these clothes are here,” one vendor shouts to a tourist walking through the market.

Dubbed locally as obroni wawu or “dead white person’s clothes,” the market has become a symbol of overconsumption and unsustainability of Western fashion brands and consumers donating clothes to charity – a phenomenon that has been dubbed as “waste colonialism”.

Many African countries are dealing with the burden of fast fashion brands dumping their used clothes on the continent. 

While much of these clothes are resold in markets like Kantamanto, others are of such poor quality - often plastic materials - that they are immediately sent to dumping grounds, leading to environmental pollution.

“Seven years ago, we were receiving [around] 40,000 tonnes,” said Kwamena Boison, co-founder of The Revival, who is one of many young Ghanaian designers advocating for upcycling and recycling of second-hand clothes and waste that have been polluting Accra’s beaches. 

“Now, we are receiving hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothes annually. And the quality has also dropped drastically.” 

Despite the obvious hazards, Kantamanto has also become a source of vital income for Ghanaian vendors and people across West Africa who buy, resell, and upcycle the clothes.

“Contrary to popular belief, the global secondhand trade is not charity, it is a business with the average bale cost at over $200, meaning that unsold clothing plunges Kantamanto traders into debt,” says Liz Ricketts, co-founder of the Or Foundation. 

“The New Year's Fire, which destroyed around 60 percent of the market, exacerbated this crisis, with most retailers losing thousands of dollars in merchandise and no personal savings to get back on their feet.”

Football shirts, trainers, formal shirts and smart trousers – in Kantamanto, there is a stall for every kind of footwear and item of clothing. 

At every corner, the hum of sewing machines can be heard as tailors repair and “upcycle” old items of clothing into ingenious new creations. 

It’s a sound Boison heard throughout his childhood when hand-made, high-quality materials, including kente, wax print, and tie-dye materials, were more available.

“[Kantamanto] is basically the solution to this global fashion menace. We have proven that we are more sustainable,” says Boison, who has worked with vendors in Kantamanto for years, designing jewellery and leather bags inspired by Angolan face masks from second-hand materials. 

But still, “capitalist systems or even colonial elements still seep through in this fashion space,” he adds.

“There are people who are being innovative and trying to turn the clothes into something more beautiful, something more valuable. But for how long can this happen?”

For years, there have been whispers of plans to modernise the Kantamanto market. But ad-hoc construction has continued over the years, and fires are almost an annual occurrence in Kantamanto, locals say.

But the impact of the January fire was unprecedented, and it has had a knock-on effect on more than just Accra’s vendors. 

Salwa Youssif, a head porter or kayayei, left the city of Tamale in northern Ghana for Accra with her friends. 

Skilfully balancing several kilos of clothes bales on her head, she meanders through the aisles of the bustling market daily, risking back and head pain. 

Youssif has been saving up to open her own tailored clothing store. But in the weeks since the January fire, her salary plummeted.

“Before the fire, we would get around 100 cedis (around $6) on a good day,” the 30-year-old says. 

Youssif pauses as she struggles to estimate how much she made in the weeks following the fire, guessing it could have been half of 100 cedis. “We aren’t doing much now because the market is still in the process of rebuilding.”

Under its returning president, John Dramani Mahama, who won a historic comeback election in December, the Ghanaian government donated one million cedis (over $64,000) to support victims weeks after the fire, according to local media reports. The Or Foundation also committed to donating $1 million for immediate emergency relief.

As of March, the Or Foundation said they had distributed $1.5 million in direct relief to over 9,000 individuals.

Vendors say the government had also provided wood and metal sheets for ad-hoc construction. But there is some frustration that the financial aid is yet to be seen.

Emmanuel Nelson, 37, has worked in Kantamanto market for almost 20 years. He lost all of his stock – winter clothing, boots, and puffer jackets. 

A handful of puffer jackets he purchased after the fire are all he has left after his two stalls were destroyed.

“I lost everything. I am the breadwinner. I have to go home with something,” Nelson tells TRT World. 

“People from home are calling us and telling us, ‘[The government and NGO’s said] they’re giving you money. But for me and the people around me, we haven’t seen any money. We don’t know whether they are going to give it to us.”

“The carpentry work that they’re doing, we’re paying for it with our own money.”

The vendors of Kantamanto have seen many fires over the years, but never any as devastating as the New Year's fire. There have already been calls from vendors' associations and those working from Kantamanto for around-the-clock security guards and fireproofing of the stalls. 

Many like Nelson have had to rebuild their own stalls, starting their entire businesses again from scratch, until the next fire.

“People can’t be resilient all the time,” Boison concluded. 

“For a space like this that is doing so much for the entire global textile market industry dealing with the waste that has been coming from the Global North, I feel like it would make more sense that one of these huge fashion brands would divert at least some of these funds directly into the market.”