Can Flipping Shein’s Algorithm Fix Fashion’s Problems?
And How Ghana Has the Potential to Birth a New Chapter
Let’s Start With the Truth: Ghana is absorbing the cost of other people’s fashion fantasies.
Every week, hundreds of tons of used clothes arrive at the Port of Tema. They come sorted, bundled, and branded as "donations," but 40% of the clothing is unsellable waste. This is a supply chain problem of externalised cost. Dumping environmental, economic, and psychological burdens onto countries like Ghana.
As Tara Zhang writes in her Human Rights Research (2024) article: "We're not just a case study in waste colonialism. We're the cautionary tale of what happens when style is built on speed, and speed is built on someone else's land, labour, and landfill".
I don't intend this piece as an exposé. It's a blueprint. A third lane. One that isn't a finger-wag at fast fashion or a nostalgia trip about pre-colonial textiles, but a strategic, clear-headed call to action for anyone serious about redesigning fashion's future.
Here's what to stop. Here's what to build. Here's who should pay. And here's how Ghana, and the Global South can help set the rules of the game.
DESIGN: IF IT’S BROKEN FROM THE BEGINNING, REPAIR WON’T SAVE IT
Fashion has a design problem. Not the aesthetic kind, the system kind. Garments today are built to fail: polyester-cotton blends that can't be recycled, embellishments that make disassembly impossible, and collections made faster than logistics can catch up. It's industrialised inefficiency, or rather what we now call efficient pollution.
So where do we begin? Upstream.
If we want to fix fashion, we have to fix what gets produced, how it gets made, and why it was made in the first place.
Here's where things get interesting.
Take Shein. Underneath the drama, the ultra-fashion brand's data-driven, SKU-level production engine is one of the most efficient tools for avoiding overproduction we've seen. That system, predictive, real-time and agile, could be powerful if decoupled from volume-based growth and repurposed inside a low-velocity design system.
Now imagine applying that same precision to longevity instead of turnover. Predictive demand could be used to create modular garments. Modular garments such as a shirt with updatable sleeves, buttons, or silhouette, which wouldn't require disposing of the whole thing. Seasonal trends would be managed by versioning rather than introducing a high volume of brand new products.
This brings us to a larger principle: Design Sovereignty.
Design sovereignty in fashion means designing for context and place. Here, there's no need for Ghanaian designers to mimic Scandinavian minimalism to be sustainable. Once equipped with the right tools, autonomy, and capital, Ghanaian designers should be able to build for their climate, their culture, and their customers.. This principle also invites us to rethink "innovation" beyond digital tools—to include tailoring, modularity, and climate-aware fabrics.
Now, when producers in the Global North start taking disassembly design seriously, investing in African pattern libraries, and supporting R&D in adaptable fabrics — then Kantamanto can do what it already does best: rework, upcycle, and respond with even more precision.
Do those upstream choices at scale, and suddenly, overproduction drops. Design meets reality. Circularity becomes real infrastructure.
TRENDS & BEHAVIOUR: TASTE IS POLICY
Yet, design alone won't save us. We’d need to talk about desire.
This is because people don't change their behaviour because they were told to. They change because something cooler, smarter, or more rewarding comes along. Worry not, activists. It is not a moral failure, just a matter of sociology.
Blumer (1969) said it best: "Fashion is a creator of social order. Not a mirror of individual taste, but a collective script."
We're already seeing this play out in Ghana. The rise of designers like Ajabeng, Oldie but Goodie, or Re'House by goTo prove that when sustainability feels stylish, people don't need to be persuaded. They demand to see it, touch it, and wear it. It's why thrift culture thrives in Accra. Not because of eco-consciousness, but rather because it feels fresh and cool.
What does this mean? Building fashion sustainability and local appetite for circular designs is a marketing problem as much as a manufacturing one. TikTok challenges, Sunday best, and streetwear drops—they can all serve as taste-shifting levers. The opportunity is clear. If we reposition reuse as the default, repair as a flex, and rework as art, we don't need guilt trips. We need good stylists and business folk ready to get to work.
MARKET MODELS: BUILDING INDUSTRY FROM THE WASTE STREAM UP
So we have the design vision and the cultural momentum. Now we need the infrastructure.
Ghana has a fashion ecosystem worth $1.6 billion that everyone's now trying to formalise into an industry. This ecosystem is messy, informal, undercapitalised, and externally dependent. The government is building three garment factories for 27,000 jobs. Just the other day, we convened at a Design Summit at the British High Commission to plot our 'global success.'
Kantamanto - the engine where traders, tailors, and reworkers create entire wardrobes from the world's fashion leftovers - processes 15 million Western garments weekly. This isn't necessarily an industry failing to launch; it's a sophisticated waste management system that fashion happens to emerge from.
And maybe that's the uncomfortable truth: our most successful fashion infrastructure was built to process other people's failures, not to create our own successes.
Kantamanto is not polished, but it's powerful. And if we're serious about building something scalable and sovereign, this is exactly where we start: with what already works. Imagine fibre labs right at the edge of the market — small-scale, community-run spaces where unsellable imports are shredded and reblended with local fibre waste like cotton, banana, or pineapple husks. These could become the backbone of Ghana’s circular material story. What comes in broken… exits as something new.
Next, we need transparency. Both for compliance and value creation. A simple tagging system or labelling system could tell a garment’s story: where it came from, what's been done to it, who altered it.
Vendors could price more accurately. Tailors could receive royalties or recognition. Buyers would know they’re investing in real reuse, not just resale. But none of this matters if people can't afford to participate. Access is key. Most Ghanaians can't afford a GHS 600 upcycled outfit. Essentially, circularity has to meet people where they are. That could look like tiered pricing models for repairs and rework, co-ops backed by microfinance, or rental services for office wear and occasions. Upcycling should feel aspirational, yes, but never out of reach.
If we do this right: fibre labs running, traceability flowing, co-ops thriving. Kantamanto moves from survival to evolution. From informal hustle to circular engine. From waste management to wealth creation. That's how Ghana builds industrial dignity from the bottom up, using what we already have.
POLICY & LEVERAGE: FROM RECIPIENT TO RULE-MAKER
Now for the power play.
Protectionism won't save us. But (bargaining) power might. Ghana is not a large consumer market. But it is a high-impact recipient market. What happens here can shape how the global fashion industry defines responsibility at end-of-life.
So let's talk levers:
• Enhanced EPR: Any brand whose clothes are found in Ghana's waste stream pays into a circular infrastructure fund.
• Textile Waste Index: Ghana launches the first resale-recyclability dashboard that tracks the worst offenders: By volume, by ease of recycling and by actual resale performance. Think: a public-facing data set that builds on the OR Foundation’s work, but adds circular processing metrics, not just shipment origin.
• West Africa Waste Alliance: Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya negotiate as a bloc to control waste imports, demand infrastructure investments, and set recycling standards.
• Tiered Import Licenses: Green light for traceable, recyclable goods. Red light for toxic blends and mystery bales.
How do we prioritise? Here’s where we borrow Bjørn Lomborg’s cost-value lens. His core idea is that for every dollar spent, choose interventions with the highest long-term payoff. In Ghana’s case, we should prioritise fabric recycling, repair apprenticeships, and local dye supply chains. While Lomborg has been criticised for underplaying environmental urgency, his core insight on maximising impact per dollar aligns perfectly with Ghana's need to get outsized social and economic returns on limited resources.
Here's the critical point: Don't ban second-hand clothing. Banning second-hand clothing won't fix the problem. It'll just bury the evidence, cut livelihoods, and leave the Global North's overproduction crisis conveniently invisible. Make it accountable. Don't shut Kantamanto. Fund it.
WHAT NEXT-GEN FASHION LOOKS LIKE
This has nothing to do with charity. Guilt isn't the focus. It has to do with strategy.
If you're a policymaker in Brussels or a sustainability exec in New York, the question is no longer, "How do we help Ghana?"
The question is, "Why aren't we building with Ghana?"
Here is a country where reuse is culture, where circularity is a tactic of survival. The people are ready. The systems exist. They're just waiting for capital, infrastructure, and policy to catch up.
And if you're in Ghana? Know this: you are not downstream. You are not a passive recipient of fast fashion's sins. You are a co-author of fashion's next chapter.
Let's write it like we mean it.
OVER TO YOU -
OVER TO YOU -
Support brands and initiatives like Ajabeng, Oldie but Goodie, Chiip O’ Neal or Re’House by GoTo as they exemplify the type of fashion future we want to see.
Learn more about and support Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) by demanding visible fees on clothing items, transparency, modest cost to support textile recycling and reuse, and advocate for brands.
Support the OR Foundation, GoTo, The Revival - all local Ghanaian initiatives tackling waste colonialism and encouraging climate action locally.
Take the opportunity to rethink your relationship with the brands you wear. You have the power to hold them accountable and demand change at every interaction.
