![At least 20 percent of second-hand clothes in Rwanda come from the US [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/10/3/2f9f6a5d16944607ae2d65e5492a8927_18.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
Kigali, Rwanda – Bayingana Mark is trying on a crisp white shirt at the Biryogo market in Kigali’s Nyariambo district, known for its small-scale traders selling second-hand clothes from all over the world.
Even when worn over his polo, the button-up shirt is too big, but Mark seems determined to it. He takes it off and tucks it under his arm. Around him, the market is overflowing with clothes.
Hundreds of shirts and dresses hang from rails, trousers are folded on wooden tables, while hundreds and thousands of other items of clothing are jumbled on cotton sheets on the ground.
But there are few customers.
Mark, a trader and head of Biryogo market, tells Al Jazeera that the lull is due to a government-imposed tax on imported second-hand clothes last year.
“Since the second-hand clothes tax was implemented in Rwanda, business dried up and most people have lost their jobs here,” 39-year-old Mark says.
“Look at this shirt, yes, it’s second-hand, but its quality,” he says, unfolding his purchase.
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Second-hand clothing is a multimillion-dollar industry in East Africa.
While the clothing comes from across the globe, including Europe and China, most originates from the United States.
According to USAID, the industry employs more than 355,000 people in East Africa, supporting the livelihoods of 1.4 million people.
But it is also seen as one of the primary reasons local textile industries collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s.
In a bid to resuscitate local manufacturing, East African governments, including those of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, agreed in March 2016 to increase tariffs on imported used clothes with the intention of phasing them out by 2019.
In the 2016/2017 financial year, Rwanda raised the tax on imported used clothes from $0.20 to $2.50 per kilo and to $4 in the next financial year.
This is a political choice which holds the citizen’s dignity at its centre. We ultimately make decisions for ourselves and the Rwandan people.
Reactions have been mixed.
Those supportive of the Rwandan government’s bullish ambition to develop local manufacturing see the decision as a boon for their trade.
Traders like Mark and a seller from Murambi in southern Rwanda – who preferred to remain anonymous – say the taxes have made used products unaffordable for most Rwandans.
Around the Biryogo market, an entire network of traders has been affected by the tax.
Tailors who altered used clothes and wholesalers and distributors who transported goods to smaller towns and villages across the country are now without work.
According to those who remain, many left to the DRC for Uganda to continue their businesses.
One female tailor who works outside the main Biryogo market, and also asked not to be named, said her clientele had fallen by 60 percent. “We are battling,” she told Al Jazeera.
A question of ‘dignity’
The Rwandan government says the decision to tax used clothes was not just about money. It was also about reclaiming dignity.
“This is a political choice which holds the citizen’s dignity at its centre,” Ladislas Ngendahimana, a political analyst based in Kigali, says of a “Made in Rwanda” campaign.
“We ultimately make decisions for ourselves and the Rwandan people,” he added.
Clare Akamanzi, CEO of Rwanda Development Board (RDB), says that it is the government’s “belief that our citizens deserve better than becoming the recipients of discarded clothes from the western world. This is about the dignity of our people”.
Rwanda is attempting to shed the “dependency” and “third world” labels and wants to become a middle-income country by 2020.
But 63 percent of the population still earn less than $1.25 a day.
Some people don’t have a choice between dignity and necessity. They are too poor to be able to care much about that.
Rwanda’s insistence on maintaining the import tax and banning used clothing by 2019 has also ruffled feathers outside the country.
At least 20 percent of all used clothes in Rwanda are imported from the US.
The US has repeatedly warned that should the East African community go ahead with implementing import taxes and eventually banning used clothes, they would lose the benefits of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows African countries to export certain items to the US without paying duties.
Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya in 2017 separately retreated from the pact to increase import taxes…
