NIKIN visits East Africa to learn about the second-hand clothing trade

(CONNECT) Nicholas Hänny and Robin Gnehm travelled with a small team to Kenya and Uganda to mark the 10-year anniversary of their textile firm NIKIN. During the trip, the founders of the sustainable fashion brand explored what happens in East Africa to clothing from the Global North that is no longer worn. The impressions they gathered from a visit to a landfill site in Nairobi, a second-hand market in Kampala and from the upcycling label Buzigahill showed Hänny and Gnehm “just how closely overconsumption, livelihoods and new business models are interconnected”, as NIKIN writes in a statement covering the anniversary trip.

Of the entire trip, the visit to the Dandora landfill site in the Kenyan capital was an experience that will certainly stay with Hänny and Gnehm for a long time. Amid burning piles of trash, the founders of NIKIN did actually manage to spot a few pieces of clothing that were still wearable, which is collected by the organization Dandora Green and reprocessed into new textiles.

At the Owino Market in Kampala, used clothing from various parts of the world is repaired, altered and resold. According to the statement, NIKIN’s founders saw first-hand just how much “work and skill goes into the continued use of clothing” there. “For many people, second-hand items provide a livelihood”. At Buzigahill, a fashion label also based in the Ugandan capital, second-hand textiles are broken down before being reprocessed into new garments, some of which are then sent back to the Global North.

“We came back motivated and inspired, but also slightly reflective”, Hänny states. For him, the company’s responsibility goes way beyond simply selling products: “We have to start taking greater account of how long clothing is worn and what happens to it afterwards”. The trip to Nairobi and Uganda spawned a video documentary, which is set to be shown for the first time by NIKIN on October 24 in Aarau in the Swiss canton of Aargau as part of TreeFest to celebrate the company’s tenth birthday. ce/hs