Thousands of traders face ruin after blaze razes two-thirds of Accra’s Kantamanto, which receives an estimated 15m used clothes from global north each week. A huge cleanup operation is taking place after a fire devastated one of the world’s biggest secondhand clothes markets.
![[The scene of devastation at the secondhand clothing market at Kantamanto in Accra, Ghana, on 2 January 2025 after an overnight fire.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c3944086ef38e7ffe0790f197b745861ea35267a/0_0_5464_3640/master/5464.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Thousands of traders’ stalls were destroyed in the blaze that started at about 10pm on 1 January and consumed large sections of Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana’s capital. The Ghana national fire service (GNFS) deployed 13 tenders to combat the flames. Goods worth millions of Ghanaian cedi have been destroyed, the GNFS said.
![[People scramble among the still smouldering remains to salvage what they can from the fire-devastated Kantamanto secondhand clothes market.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fb9702ad82a8b496d8627c51ef76a10d95fbc635/0_0_4000_2667/master/4000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“This is devastating,” said Alex King Nartey, a GNFS spokesperson. “We’ve not recorded severe casualties, but the economic loss is enormous. “Preliminary investigations suggest faulty electrical connections might have sparked the blaze, although we are not ruling out arson,” Nartey told AFP.
As much as two-thirds of the market has been destroyed and there are estimates that 8,000 people have been affected, though this number is expected to rise. Alhassan Fatawu owned a stall where he used bits of material from secondhand clothes to make and sell his own designs, and was notified in the early hours of Thursday morning that the market was on fire.
“The man who runs the neighbouring stall called me and said everything had burned. I started panicking,” he said. He went to see the damage for himself at about 9am. “I found burnt stalls. There were still parts burning,” he said. “I couldn’t salvage a thing [from my stall]. Everything has gone. Now my daily bread has been cut. I used my stall at Kantamanto to sustain myself.”.
