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THE agreement taken by the Council of Ministers for the African Continental Free Trade Area for a new protocol to ban trade in second-hand clothes within AfCFTA shows that the free trade area can protect local industry as well as promote it through continental trade.
Most countries in Africa these days are seen as suitable dumping ground for second-hand clothes, most of which come from Europe considering the near absence of the specific Asian cultural styles within the bales, and the slight American differences and specific styles.
The trade is fairly new, just a few decades old, and arises from the growing prosperity of Europeans, largely as a result of their own free trade area, and the fact that many now in Europe replace a lot of their clothing when fashion changes, a frequent occurrence, rather than when clothes wear out.
There is still a bit of a market in Europe for the most prestigious brands, but the rest will swamp the limited market.
There are still thrift shops, and charitable donations of clothes, but the supply must now greatly exceed demand, and that has opened up a growing business for a new group of entrepreneurs who are able to buy large quantities of ordinary second-hand clothes, bail them up and ship them to Africa.
Even with the final retail prices still below the cost of new clothes, the original cost is so low that there is enough for the shipping costs and the multiple profit margins.
This trade, which appears so innocent, has destroyed much of the textile and clothing manufacture industry in Africa, hence the attempts in several countries, including Zimbabwe, to restrict or ban the business.
Now AfCFTA is ready to create the formal legal framework to simply forbid such imports into member states. And the ban needs to be continent wide, so the smuggling rings can be defeated.
Zimbabwe, for example, severely restricts such imports and charges duties on them. This replaced a total ban attempted in 2015 and withdrawn after a lot of people complained that they would lose their livelihoods or would lose their opportunity to buy cheaper clothing.
Now a lot of the bales of clothes are smuggled into Zimbabwe from Mozambique, with the smuggling gangs having even graded tracks to the border on both sides, and created their own border crossings, especially in the vicinity of Mutare and the Vumba.
This is about the only way they can still make the business highly profitable, by avoiding the duties.
The only real way of curbing that is to be able to catch a higher percentage of the trucks trying to sneak across, and confiscate them so that the losses in lorries outweigh the profits from smuggling.
But the one problem of living in a region where all countries are now good friends is that we do not waste money on vast numbers of border guards with a lot of fancy equipment, although the drones that are being commissioned along the Limpopo border show that a lot more can be done at much lower cost.
Zimbabwe used to have a flourishing cotton, spinning, weaving and manufacturing industry.
There are still good chunks left, basically the manufacture of work clothes and school uniforms, even if the material has to be imported these days. But there used to be a lot more, with almost everything on our backs made in Zimbabwe.
We are starting to rebuild the textile industry. Our cotton farmers are now growing a lot more, thanks to the Government intervening and largely taking over Cottco again, after selling it off, so farmers are paid and paid on time.
A major investor, prominent in the vegetable oil industry and supportive of cotton gins, has now overcome the legal hassles faced with his buyout of the moribund and largely closed David Whitehead.
He bought, in effect, the buildings and the access to a skilled workforce since the remnants of the equipment were old technology and on their last legs.
He has been importing container loads of new equipment to restore the spinning mills, adding considerably to the capacity of other Zimbabwean firms, and reopening the weaving mills.
We used to weave almost all the fabric used in the large Zimbabwean clothing, cutting and manufacturing sector.
These days it is all imported, mostly from Asia, showing the damage was not just in Zimbabwe but across Africa.
But to give African industrialists the sort of markets they need to invest in a viable textile and clothing industry, using the raw cotton that many countries either grow or can grow, and there is not really any country in Africa that cannot grow cotton, they need at least a level playing field.
There will be competition from manufacturers of new clothing, although AfCFTA will at least allow Africans to trade without customs duties, but African industrialists simply have to be efficient and know their markets to compete successfully.
The influx of ultra cheap second-hand clothes, usually with well over half their wearable life but sold for well under half their price as new, since European clothes are not that cheap, so distorts the markets that it makes the creation of a proper textile and clothing industry hard to sustain, yet textiles are one of the traditional basic industries that most countries in the process of industrialisation start with.
Textiles tend to be labour intensive, which suits most African countries, and the wages while not the highest in industry are usually better than a lot of alternatives.
Zimbabwe, and other African countries, can build on their cotton value chain to add other natural fibres.
The sheep range in Africa is limited, but still large, and goats are ubiquitous. Angora and other fine wools come from breeds of goat.
A growing chemical industry can also supply the synthetics which have their markets, and supply the treatment chemicals that make natural fibres easier to use and wear.
But the industrialists need the full market to do this, competing on a level playing field with outsiders, and the dumpers of European cast-off clothing are not a fair or legitimate supplier.
Online Reporter