Why Do People In African Countries No Longer Rely On Donated Second-Hand Clothing?

According to the world clothing and shoe net, people in African countries no longer want to rely on the "second hand" donated by western countries.

And the Chinese are helping them build their own.

By Boeing, Cadillac, UBS and other companies to invest in the establishment.

Opportunities from Africa

Every day, workers in the C&H Garment Factory are asked to learn several Chinese characters. On the white plastic board, Xiao Mei, the owner of the factory, wrote three, 8, 9, 10 figures in Chinese, English and Rwanda (Kinyarwanda). Ma Xiaomei said, "we are opening factories in China, so we want to introduce some Chinese culture to the locals."

Every morning, the workers in the factory do morning exercises like Chinese workers, and hang banner in Chinese and English, such as "hard work", "quality" and "responsibility".

On the grasslands outside the factory, the flag of China and Rwanda are flying high.

All this happened in the Kigali Special Economic Zone in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.

Attracting the Chinese investors is a major achievement of the Rwanda government. The special economic zone of Kigali will help the Rwanda government get rid of the "second-hand clothes" donated from Europe and the United States.

At the same time, develop our own industry.

For the Rwanda government, Ma Xiaomei's factory can not only develop the economy and provide employment opportunities (Note: C&H employs 800 locals), but more importantly, it will help Rwanda build its own textile industry.

The Rwandan people no longer want to wear "old clothes".

"This is the ability and self-reliance of a country.

We want to be independent and wear our own clothes.

Wearing other's second-hand clothes is called dignity, which makes you proud.

Geraldl Mukub (Gerald Mukubu), chief executive officer of Rwandan private enterprise said.

{page_break}

In Rwanda, second-hand clothes are in the open air.

On the side of the road, the shop is open for sale.

More than 70% of the world's donated clothing was eventually sent to Africa.

According to statistics, Rwanda spends more than 100 million dollars a year on clothing imports, whether it's new clothes or old clothes.

Secondhand clothes are not just worn by poor people, but old clothes will not be disliked for the local middle class.

Even Mu Ku Bu himself has said that many of his colleagues wear second-hand clothing.

The East African Community (EAC), including Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, intends to ban second-hand clothing in 2019.

Government officials say old clothes bring a lot of germs and seriously harm people's health.

Not only East Africa, South Africa has banned the sale of second-hand clothing, but Garner has stopped using second hand underwear.

Malawi and Zimbabwe are also considering the ban on the sale of second-hand clothing.

The action of the African government has given Ma Xiaomei such a great power of businessmen, and they have seen tremendous business opportunities.

Ma Xiaomei said that the Rwanda government's policy is to attract her greatest motivation. The local government does not collect any taxes other than personal income tax, and all clothing exported from Africa to the United States is exempt from import duties in 15 years.

In addition to exporting clothing to the United States, C&H is also manufacturing underwear on a large scale locally, unlike other clothing, which is sold to locals.

Ma Xiaomei has a garment factory in Rwanda, and there used to be a mobile phone factory in Kenya.

The government not only wants businessmen like Ma Xiaomei to help Africa make clothes, but ambitious politicians want to build their own industrial system.

China and Africa manufacture together

China's investment in East Africa is just the beginning. With the rising labor costs in China, more and more Chinese businessmen are beginning to enter Africa to find cheap labor.

Investors from China set up factories in Africa, buy raw materials in Africa, and hire African workers.

Not just ordinary clothing, leather goods, plastic products and shoes have begun to turn into "made in Africa".

China's famous female shoe maker Huajian group has established its own shoe factory in Ethiopia. Other Chinese investors are also interested in Ethiopia's neighbour Tanzania. Tanzania is a famous cotton producing country in East Africa. For the spinning and weaving industry, it can reduce the cost greatly.

At the China Africa Forum Johannesburg summit last year, Tian Xuejun, China's ambassador to South Africa, told reporters that China hopes to turn "made in China" into "made in China and Africa".

China is looking forward to helping Africa complete its industrialization. In 2063, manufacturing industry could occupy more than 50% of GDP in Africa.

Today, industry accounts for only about 10% of GDP in Africa. In the World Bank report, this data has not changed since 1990.

Now China is moving the "low tech industry" out of China, which is a golden opportunity for Africa.

Now Africans are no longer strangers to Chinese enterprises' investments.

In the special economic zone of Kigali, there is also a Chinese enterprise producing "Every Time" toilet paper on sale locally, and a neighboring enterprise producing wooden doors.

With the seduction of high profits, Ma Xiaomei has begun to think about reopening the mobile phone factory in Kenya.

But for Chinese businessmen, it is not all good news.

Huang Dazhong, a businessman from Zhejiang, China, was very unhappy with the learning ability of the local people. He said, "they will not work at all. You teach them something. They forget it again after second nights."

Huang Dazhong opened a bamboo product factory in Rwanda, mainly making toothpicks.

In Zhejiang, bamboo factories are often the first step in building the textile industry.

"Rwanda is still a long way from building manufacturing," Huang Dazhong said.

New clothes represent the progress of society.

Rwanda is clearly not the easiest place to establish textile industry. The cost of pportation is undoubtedly the biggest problem for the landlocked country.

The cost of pporting from Kigali to Kenya port Mombasa (Mombasa) is often higher than that from Mombasa to Guangzhou.

Ma Xiaomei must import all the raw materials, including sutures and zippers.

So to this day, Ma Xiaomei's textile mills have not yet started to generate profits.

But at the moment, she is optimistic about it. After all, she has been in Rwanda for 16 years. She believes that she has a unique advantage over Huang Dazhong businessmen. She said, "you have to understand them."

For Ma Xiaomei, the efficiency of the workers can only be stimulated by understanding the local people first.

Ma Xiaomei believes that sooner or later, Chinese factories will move to cheaper places in Southeast Asia and Africa.

And she was the first to root in Rwanda.

More importantly, everything in Rwanda reminds her of China's life in the 1980s.

At that time, like Rwanda, many people wore second-hand clothes.

Nowadays, no one will wear old clothes.

New clothes are a sign of social progress.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.