This article is part of our ‘(Re)Made in Ghana’ series, which explores what one of the world’s largest circular fashion ecosystems can teach us about the future of fashion. Read our series on ‘Made in Italy’ here, ‘Made in India’ here, and ‘Made in the UK’ here.
It’s 5am on a Wednesday in mid-October, and the sun is already blazing hot. I’m standing in the beating heart of Kantamanto Market, one of the world’s largest resale and upcycling ecosystems. Music blasts, sewing machines hum, and the haggling begins as retailers open fresh bales of used clothing, the majority of which is imported from the Global North.
Each week, Kantamanto Market receives around 15 million items of used clothing, which its 30,000 traders work tirelessly — and ingeniously — to keep in circulation. Retailers scour Pinterest for the latest trends and seek out “first selection” (the highest-quality secondhand clothing) for their stalls. Upcyclers create one-of-a-kind pieces in collaboration with the swathes of talented repairers and tailors, while others make the best of the clothing that turns up ripped or stained, turning cotton shirts into boxer shorts or adult jeans into children’s. It’s a vibrant case of circular fashion in action.
At first glance, it’s hard to believe that 60% of this market was burnt to ashes less than a year ago. But, beyond the bustle, the fire continues to cast shadows over everyday life here. The market structure is still primarily made from wood, and despite a recently standardised electrical system, many traders are still operating without consistent access to power. There are still no fire lanes — a feature that firefighters say could have limited the destruction caused in January — and many traders are still suffering the financial and health impacts of the blaze.
On Thursday, the official report of the fire relief and recovery efforts was published, authored by Ghanaian-American non-profit The Or Foundation, with contributions from – and data compiled by – the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Kantamanto Market community leaders and other local agencies. It reveals a preventable tragedy that claimed two lives and over 10,000 livelihoods, and a fashion industry that continues to overlook an essential cog in its circular future.
A tale of two fires
According to a timeline compiled by the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and The Or Foundation, the fire started between 10pm and midnight on January 1, 2025. GNFS was first notified just after 1am, and the first fire truck arrived on the scene within five minutes. Thirteen additional trucks followed within three hours, and the fire was finally extinguished around 2.30pm on January 2. In less than 24 hours, the fire had razed more than half of the market to the ground.
The fire and response highlighted several serious issues with the infrastructure of Kantamanto Market. According to the report, the lack of fire lanes stopped fire trucks from reaching the source of the fire, and without functioning fire hydrants on the scene, firefighters had to make near-constant runs to fill their tanker trucks, which “greatly impeded” the response. While no official cause has been determined, hazardous electrical wiring and unattended open flames used for cooking or heat were deemed to have been the most plausible explanation at the time.
Small fires are relatively common at Kantamanto Market, but the scale and devastation of the January blaze took everyone by surprise, says Gilbert Nii Ankrah, head of communications for the AMA. “The fire outbreak was alarming for us. We did not expect such magnitude.” While the AMA did not donate funds to the relief efforts, it helped coordinate between different agencies and supported The Or Foundation’s plans. It also paused the payments traders make to the AMA for a year, alleviating some of the financial burden facing retailers, he adds.
The Or Foundation — which has been operating around Kantamanto since 2011 — pulled together a three-phase plan, covering emergency operations, data collection and rebuilding, and direct distribution of financial relief to impacted market members. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, it was estimated that the plan would require $5 million – an amount the organisation did not have available or otherwise unallocated. It launched a public fundraising campaign and seeded the pot with $1 million of its existing funds, which had been earmarked for other projects. Public, corporate and philanthropic contributions then added $465,500, but the fundraiser fell short of its goal, so the non-profit spoke to its funders about redirecting more from its other projects. By the end of October, the Or Foundation says it had spent a total of $2.95 million on the fire relief efforts, excluding the time and in-kind contributions of its team. “We were fortunate to be able to make that choice at the time,” says co-founder Liz Ricketts. “But now we are facing the consequences as an organisation, and having to think strategically about which programmes need to be cut or scaled back if we cannot replenish the funds.”
Despite The Or Foundation’s continuous calls for globally accountable extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations, the global fashion industry still isn’t paying to support vital circular ecosystems like Kantamanto Market — in fact, ultra-fast fashion giant Shein is still one of the only brands to have made a sizeable donation to the non-profit in the name of EPR. A “heart-warming” amount of individuals donated to the fire relief fund, alongside previous partners and contacts such as Vestiaire Collective, Dbrand, and a collective of Belgian fashion brands, says Ricketts, but the broader industry response was shockingly low, especially in comparison to the LA wildfires just a week later. “That was really disheartening, because a big part of our mission since 2018 has been to get people to understand that the global secondhand trade is not a charity, and it’s not recycling, it’s part of the supply chain,” she continues. “Clearly, we still have a lot of work to do on that front.”
Others felt similarly overlooked. Yayra Agbofah, whose non-profit The Revival also operates in and around Kantamanto, says he raised €12,150 in public donations through GoFundMe, and secured €20,000 each from Bestseller Foundation and Zalando. Other brands that failed to donate “just proved their blatant neglect”, he says. “This was a massive disaster, and we were left alone to deal with it.”
Almost a year on, how far has Kantamanto recovered?
Despite the shortfall in public funding, Kantamanto Market was open for business within three months of the fire.
In the first two weeks after the fire, the Or Foundation says it spent $17,291 clearing debris (including the provision of four dump trucks per day from a private waste haulage company for one week), running relief tents for medical support (quickly scaling up to three tents) and sharing water and other provisions with impacted community members (average temperatures at this point were over 32 degrees Celsius). More than 2,000 people benefited from these services each day. From 6 January to 12 February, the non-profit registered 9,232 people for direct relief funds and started the structural rebuild of the market. From 15 January to 14 March, it transferred 50,000 Ghanaian Cedis (GHS) (approximately $4,500) to the Kantamanto Upcyclers Association (KUA) and individual relief funds of 2,500 GHS ($225) to 9,237 community members.
Similarly, Agbofah says The Revival was able to spend €16,300 on safety equipment for the people clearing debris, food and water for community members, temporary accommodation for six women working as kayayei who were displaced by the fire, direct cash support for 108 “highly affected” traders, and medical bills for six traders and four workers. A further €15,650 went towards infrastructure restoration, €18,400 to new machinery and micro-grants for traders, and €2,100 to bank fees. “Our approach was simple: support the people first, then rebuild the structures,” explains Agbofah.
Afraid of losing their stall spaces during the rebuilding, many traders chose to sleep in the market in the days after the fire, inhaling dust and hazardous fumes as they lay in the rubble. The health implications of this are still lingering. “There have been many deaths since the fire, because people didn’t have the money for medicine, and a lot of heart disease as well. Some of the community members with cancer no longer had money to support themselves,” says Ricketts. “We stepped in to help in as many situations as we could. That was the hardest thing for our team – people were in a state of desperation, sleeping in the market, so they were getting sicker and sicker. People were talking about the resilience of the market, but I hate that word now. Why does the community have to be strong to be uplifted? Why can’t we let people fall apart in the worst moment of their lives?”
In addition to battling health repercussions, many traders are in dire financial straits. Rosie, for example, has worked in the market for 25 years, selling used clothing. Like many retailers, she is trapped in a cycle of debt after buying bales from importers on credit, trying to recoup the losses from previous bales filled, up to 40% of which is torn, stained or otherwise unsellable upon opening. When the fire happened, she owed importers 370,000 GHS ($33,250). They gave her just 10,000 GHS ($900) in relief, and then the repayment demands continued. “It’s not easy,” says Rosie. “How can we survive like this?”
With so many informal workers in similar situations, and only 1.3% covered by any type of insurance, the direct relief funding was critical, says Bernard Ntow, a community research coordinator at The Or Foundation whose mother is a retailer at Kantamanto Market. “People lost everything. Some used the money to buy new bales or machinery, or to help their family through that moment. They just needed something to be able to start again. I’ll always remember that – being able to be part of people’s happiness in that way.”
Future-proofing (and fire-proofing) the market
Kantamanto Market stretches across 18 acres of land, and is roughly divided into 13 sections, each of which has a designated leader. Before the fire, these sections operated independently, with little collaboration between the leaders. One of the silver linings of the fire has been to bring leaders together under the newly minted Kantamanto Obroniwawu Businesses Association (KOBA). “Obroniwawu” translates to “dead white man’s clothes”, the colloquial term for used clothing imported from the Global North. “We realised that the system we had created was not helping us, because we were divided. So we came together as a united front and formed an association,” says Adutwum Atta Manu, a market leader affectionately known around Kantamanto as ‘Manager’.
After the fire, KOBA worked closely with The Or Foundation, the AMA, GNFS and the Electric Company of Ghana (ECG) on a recovery plan that would mitigate the risk of further fires starting and spreading. This included the establishment of a standardised electrical grid throughout the market, and the installation of 995 fire extinguishers — one for every 10 stalls, with additional extinguishers for high-risk areas near food service shops. So far, almost 700 market traders have been trained to use them, with additional training ongoing, according to The Or Foundation.
The other major development is the creation of a dedicated Kantamanto Market Security Service — 60 people jointly recruited by the Ghana Police Service, GNFS and female-led private security contractor SheGuards, which enforces the new market opening and closing times (6am to 6pm, six days a week), agreed by market leaders. As a result, the market no longer hosts commercial or residential activities out of hours, which has drastically reduced the risk from open flames.
Kantamanto Market is a largely informal ecosystem, and the fire response was significantly hindered by the lack of digitised data documenting its activities, says Ricketts. Existing paper records of the market were lost in the blaze, pushing The Or Foundation to take a census of market traders to aid relief efforts. “Having all this information documented and visible helped with the crisis relief, but hopefully it will also help with business development moving forward, making it easier for customers to locate businesses,” she says.
The census captured data for 26,587 people who rely on the market for their livelihoods, many of whom had never been registered or mapped before. The Or Foundation now has a digital directory that indicates where each person is located in the market, what role they perform, which association they belong to, and whether they are registered with the Ghana Revenue Authority, the National Identification Authority, the AMA, or the National Health Insurance Scheme.
There are still many changes to be made when funding becomes available, but the market has bounced back well, all things considered. “This community is in crisis every day,” says Ricketts. “We had trained for this without even realising it.”
