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The Guardian
|October 15, 2025
Kenya seeks solution to unwanted clothing
Antony Njoroge paces back and forth, camera in hand, as people bombard him with questions. “What do we do with this? Where should I put it? The light's better over here!”
The filmmaker and his co-producer, Sally Ngoiri, are putting the final touches to an event that they never imagined would come to life when they thought up the idea in May: the first fashion show to be staged in Gikomba, Nairobi, east Africa's largest secondhand clothing market. “I’m never getting myself into something like this again,” Njoroge says, with a grin.
The Gikomba fashion show will feature in a documentary, Wasteland, which addresses the issue of mass importation of secondhand clothing - mitumba in Swahili - to Kenya but focuses on how stylists and designers are giving the garments a second life and redefining their uses.
“The idea comes from my personal experience as a citizen, seeing how my neighbourhood was getting dirtier. I saw how the Nairobi River often gets clogged with discarded clothes and plastic waste," says Ngoiri.
This story is from the October 15, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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