From gender equality to youth empowerment, from job creation to climate action, from innovation to education, the $2.4trillion global fashion industry is still seen by many as entertainment.

Despite the capacity to transform the lives of millions of people, some economies have not had it easy with the industry, especially the global south.

At the Commonwealth Business Forum that came to an end on Thursday, June 23, designers outlined major barriers they face to partake in a sustainable, empowering and inclusive fashion industry.

These include; waste from mass production in advanced countries, second-hand clothes dumped in low-income economies, and deficient local demand.

Precious Moloi-Motsepe, Founder and Executive Chairperson of African Fashion International, said the world has come to an era where the traditional model of fashion is being disrupted and challenged.

She said this disruption creates space and unique opportunity for African fashion and people once effectively responded to. In recent years, designers from emerging markets have joined the fashion ecosystem.

"Online shopping and technological and supply chains transformation means that one can be viable in the sector without having access to huge economies of scale and globalized supply chains.”

However, Matsope highlighted that the current system is immensely wasteful, for instance, clothes that end up in landfills and oceans but also in a sense that "there is a waste of opportunity for innovation.”

Raw materials for garments are sourced in Africa, manufactured in the northern hemisphere, and when the final product is discarded, it is sent back to Africa as goodwill and due to the quality of garments made from first fashion, the clothing is returned to Africa as waste, she cited.

"We can reshape the system and we have a wealth of local knowledge and tradition to draw from.”

"It’s important that we all become responsible for our own waste. It is not enough to simply say that you are sending your discarded clothing to another country and we should figure out how to re-use it, remodel, and rework it into something sustainable,” said Keneea Linton George, founder of Keneea Linton Designs

She said policymakers, brands, and consumers have a role to play in finding solutions to the waste issue.

Rwanda’s context

Teta Isibo, founder of Inzuki Designs, said the fact that Rwanda’s fashion industry is young and steadily rising is an advantage in many ways in terms of sustainability adoption.

"We do not have a culture of waste and that is because we don’t have excess. You need to have excess in order to waste."

Rwanda being a young economy, she said, makes it easier for the industry to adapt to good practices. "We can still build our policies with sustainability in mind.”

Nevertheless, Isibo said that Rwanda got a lot of pushback when it comes to banning second-hand clothing but the logic behind is that there is a need to build local garment industries.

"How are we going to do that when we are competing with a $2 or $3 cloth? Keeping in mind that what we are getting from these countries is bottom of the barrel,” she noted.

Right now, we are not ready to say no more second-hand clothes because we do not have the capacity to bridge that gap but it’s something we are moving towards, she said.

The Made in Rwanda campaign which started in 2015, led to the Made in Rwanda Policy adopted in 2017, which provided a framework to boost local production as opposed to relying on imports. This has seen an increasing demand for MIR apparel over the recent years.

Secondhand, mutumba, caguwa, vintage, mivumba; there are various names for secondhand clothing depending on what part of the world you reside in.