Mitumba, the wholesale and retail second-hand clothing and footwear business which has dominated the Kenyan market for over two decades, must be rejected. The business is a disgrace to the pride of Kenyans. It has turned this country a consumer nation, not a producer of its own products. Kenya is today a leading supermarket of products rejected in their countries of origin, in this case mitumba.
It is a form of dumping. Yet, the mitumba business with all the fame, provides jobs for few individuals and denies the majority of Kenyans jobs that would have been created by supporting the growth of domestic textile and footwear industries, as was the case before the collapse of local textile industries like Rivatex in Eldoret, Kikomi in Kisumu and Tetex in Thika in the 1970s through 1980s.
Mitumba products are a health risk. Worn and dumped in the Kenyan market by unknown people, mitumba easily could infect us with maladies alien to us. Those secondhand shoes you wear, or the pants, or the bra, could be the source of a disease you wouldn’t know. They pose a health risk. What I know about mitumba — the second-hand clothing and footwear on the market today — is that they were not meant to be a mass business to benefit the few. Initially mitumba were donations to the needy in the society.
Only some few unscrupulous individuals saw loopholes in and turned it into a profteering venture that eventually led to the collapse of our once-thriving textile industries. Mitumba has turned Kenya into a consumer nation. Over the years, Kenyans have come to appreciate foreign products like mitumba, whereas we could very easily produce new clothing and footwear locally for domestic consumption and export.
Yes, mitumba products are cheap, but being cheap has consequences. It costs more to buy mtumba product. The consumer often frequents the market to replace the already worn-out shoe or that shirt. It means spending more than saving for something else. If the mitumba trade has contributed to the collapse of the local textile industry and loss of jobs, it has also denied Kenya’s export market.
Take the example of AGOA — the United States African Growth and Opportunity Act which became law in 2000 and which permits 39 Sub-Saharan African counties, including Kenya, to export certain duty-free products like apparel, footwear, wine and some agricultural products to the United States. Unlike Kenya, Mauritius has been most successful in the AGOA legislation.
Admittedly, Kenya has also been one of the leading exporters of apparel to the US but what this country exports is produced in the Export Processing Zones, which are companies that are largely foreign, not domestically owned. If Kenya is to industrialize and create jobs in the domestic market, we need to reverse our penchant for foreign products, more so in the second-hand mitumba business. It is a threat to the success of local industry.
