Salaula: The International Trade of Donated Second-Hand Clothing to Zambia

Lotte de Haan

The trade in donated second-hand clothes from the west to Africa is worth $5 billion per year, transforming 8 billion kilos of unwanted garments into a new commodity. Yet vast amounts of these clothes still end up in landfills. Salaula is a Zambian word meaning selecting by rummaging through a pile. The country’s booming Salaula markets have pushed out local textile and fashion businesses, which are unable to compete with the second-hand industry and low-quality clothing that is imported from China. Donated garments, discarded as undesirable by their original owner, dress Zambians and create a local trade while simultaneously suppressing the development of an independent industry.

Lotte de Haan investigates the shifting value of clothing waste, tracing its journey from junk to commodity to junk: from the collection, sorting and compressing of textiles in the west to their reinvention in Zambia’s huge Lusaka Salaula market. Collaborating with a variety of vendors in the Lusaka market, from wholesalers to clothing pickers and tailors, she has created a series of sunshades from old clothes. Each one portrays a geographic territory and the impact of its discarded textiles on Zambia. Together, they represent the new global geography of the used clothing market.