Can South Africa turn the second-hand goods boom into a circular opportunity?

Who would have thought that second-hand clothing could be valued at roughly $198.64 billion globally? Yahoo Finance says the apparel sector is growing much faster than the traditional retail market and is projected to surpass $485 billion, more than the entire South African GDP.

What is the size of the second-hand goods in South Africa

The Who Owns Whom report on the retail trade of second-hand goods in South Africa maps out the depth of the broader industry and states that, according to estimates from the Second-Hand Dealers and Pawn Board (SDPB), the formal and semi-formal footprint in industry registry data shows that about 22,000 second-hand dealers and pawn businesses operate across South Africa.

Given that a substantial share of second-hand trade occurs within the informal economy, through township clothing resellers, street vendors, flea and community markets, car-boot sales, and unregistered peer-to-peer online transactions, the official statistics and registry records capture only part of the sector’s overall economic activity. It is safe to say that most of the participants in this industry are unregistered businesses that do not pay tax and are not in the statistical recording system. This makes it difficult to assess the true scale of the second-hand economy.

The 2026 Journal of Circular Economy study found that Africa imported more than 4.54 million tonnes of second-hand clothing worth over US$3.33 billion between 1990 and 2020, compared with just over 301,000 tonnes exported from Africa. This reflects the study’s striking pattern: imports are about 15 times exports.

The cost of the global second-hand clothing market

On the surface, the retail of second-hand goods in South Africa, particularly clothing, seems to solve several societal challenges. The industry gives low-income consumers access to the quality, style, and prestige associated with global fashion brands from Europe, Germany, Canada, and other international markets. It offers an affordable route to premium-quality garments, often at a fraction of their original retail price, while also supporting a vibrant economic activity through importers, wholesalers, informal traders, market vendors, repairers, resellers, and small businesses. But also, beneath the surface, the

growing volumes are slowly shifting the waste burden to African countries, bringing along a complex environmental and economic paradox.

The second-hand goods economy represents both an important source of affordable fashion and livelihoods and a growing challenge for South Africa’s manufacturing, waste-management and circular-economy ambitions.

DW News Africa, a news channel that reports on stories and issues people are talking about across the continent, reported that Ghana receives approximately 15 million used clothing items each week, with around 40% discarded because of poor quality, contributing to landfill and water pollution. The South African picture might be slightly different, but overall, not all the important second-hand clothing is bought or re-used but dumped in sites that are not adequately managed to mitigate environmental risk

Other cheap imports, not only those that are pre-loved, a term that is becoming synonymous with second-hand goods, further complicate not only the retail sector but the manufacturing industry, creating an urgent need for appropriate circular-economy solutions. The broader textile industry, its sustainability and industrial competitiveness, and the costs of different activities within the sector affect the wider economy.

How new technology is enabling the second-hand goods

Entrepreneurs in the second-hand industry have found creative ways to use technology to make the goods more appealing and accessible.

According to CNBC Africa, a local e-commerce platform called Yaga has become a dominant force, transforming the second-hand market into a lucrative side hustle or full-time career for thousands of South Africans. The platform has reached over 1 million users and has facilitated more than R600 million in sales.

The Who Owns Whom report outlines how technology is enabling SMMES, through social media platforms like Facebook Marketplace, TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to build content-driven micro-brands around specific styles, product categories, or customer communities. Small-scale sellers can leverage social media marketing to build loyal followings and monetise second-hand stock with relatively low upfront investment.

South Africa also grapples with the longer-term impacts on domestic industrial development, particularly where large volumes of imported used goods compete with locally manufactured products or contribute to dependence on external supply chains. The manufacturing strategy developed a number of years ago by the Department of Trade & Industry remains largely theoretical, with electricity costs further complicating the challenge.

Is the regulation effective to mitigate second-hand goods’ environmental risk?

Formal second-hand dealers, such as pawnbrokers and used-electronics dealers, are regulated under the Second-Hand Goods Act 6 of 2009, which requires registration with the South African Police Service (SAPS), prescribed record-keeping and routine inspections to combat the trade in stolen goods. These businesses are also subject to municipal by-laws and other applicable licensing requirements.

In contrast, the second-hand clothing trade generally does not fall under the Act’s registration requirements and specifically excludes second-hand clothing from the categories of goods that require dealer registration. Municipal by-laws, informal trading regulations, and local permit systems regulate

it primarily, but continue to create confusion in local government about where to report industry irregularities.

Due to lack of clarity, informal traders are subject to haphazard application of municipal by-laws relating to trading permits, public space management, waste disposal, and sanitation. Enforcement actions can result in traders being relocated or goods being confiscated, as illustrated by the closure of Johannesburg’s well-known Dunusa (a Zulu word that describes the physical motion of bending down to search, dig, or sort through piles of items) market during a municipal by-law enforcement operation in 2025.

South Africa’s second-hand goods market is both a sustainability solution and an industrial threat. Its future depends on how South Africa can enable a circular ecosystem that creates value from every pre-loved item, by combining local manufacturing, recycling, entrepreneurship, digital innovation and responsible trade, to transform waste into jobs, businesses and competitiveness.