Unfair Trade Laws Can Put A Spanner In Our Quest For A Circular Economy

USED Recycle and reuse of products make great economic and environmental sense. But will circular economy benefit the world at a time when economic giants like the US are using trade sanctions to bully Rwanda, which has banned used clothing? India too is at the risk of becoming the rich world's dumpyard

- Kundan Pandey, Banjot Kaur, Shagun Kapil, Christophe Hitayezy, Mania Waruru

AN UNEASY silence has enveloped over the once-vibrant Kimironko market in Rwanda's capital town, Kigali. Sitting in a dim corner, Emmanuel Harindin-Tiwari listens intently as the other stallholders discuss an incident on the border that now threatens political and social stability in East Africa. On May 24, the Rwandan security force gunned down two people, including a Ugandan national, for trying to smuggle used clothes into the country. Those were hand-me-downs from people living some tens of thousands of kilometers away across the North Atlantic Ocean, or beyond the Mediterranean Sea, which get sold across Africa as cheap garments and are the primary source of clothing across the continent.

But the Rwandan government does not want its citizens to sift through piles of cast-offs from wealthier nations. In its attempt to shed the "third world" label and "restore" people's dignity, the government has been aggressively regulating the entry of used clothes and footwear into the country. Since 2016-17, it has progressively increased taxes on this merchandise, first from the US $0.20 to $2.50 per kg and then to $4 in the next financial year. Tariff on used footwear has also jumped from $0.20 to $5. Simultaneously, the government has heightened surveillance along the country's porous borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is among the top importers of used clothing in Africa. This has unnerved many of the 22,000 Rwandans engaged in the trade—right from wholesalers, retailers and vendors to those involved in washing, repairing and restyling products to fit the body shapes and sizes of Africans.