Kenya's local markets a treasure trove of second-hand football jerseys

In the bustling markets of Kibera in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, second-hand football shirts are among the most coveted items.

With the FIFA World Cup about to start, the markets boast a varied collection of jerseys from the world's top soccer teams, bringing one Italian collector back to the stalls time and again.

An estimated one million people live there, packed into an area no bigger than 350 football fields, making it Africa's largest informal settlement.

For Italian football enthusiast, Antonio Massari, it's a place he keeps coming back to, partly thanks to the treasure trove of football shifts on sale in its markets.

Massari, who's from Milan, spends part of his time in Kibera volunteering as an English teacher at a local school.

The rest of the time, he enjoys searching through the local market for second-hand football jerseys, which he collects. His pupils are on hand to help.

At the local market, he teaches them how to spot an authentic shirt. The clues are subtle: the feel of the fabric, the stitching, and the labels.

"Local markets in Africa can be chaotic, messy and even muddy sometimes, but I think they are amazing, because you can potentially find absolutely anything there. For football shirts, in the past I managed to find so many good ones, from match worn shirts, vintage ones, rare ones," says Massari.

"It’s very good for my own collection, prices would range between two and ten dollars, which is very, very cheap. But also, when I want to resell some of those shirts in Europe using online markets you can make a very good profit, between 50 to 100 dollars per shirt, which I think is pretty good," he adds.

Kenya’s second-hand clothing market is vast, and Kibera’s stalls are part of a global flow of discarded garments.

About 180,000 tonnes of unsorted used garments are imported into the country each year, but while valuable items do often emerge, finding them is question of luck.

For Massari, his collection of shirts is special.

It began in 1996, when his mother gave him his first, a Parma’s home jersey. He was less interested in the team than in the shirt itself and its design.

Today, his collection numbers more than 800.

“It’s much more than collecting a piece of clothing. For me it’s collecting memories and stories, so whenever I wear a shirt it will remind me maybe of a place, of another country, of a moment that I shared with other people. So, that’s why I consider them special," he explains.

Inside his market stall, shopkeeper Emmanuel Onyango has a vast collection of football shirts neatly displayed on wire hangers.

Onyango has had the shop for a few years, selling both second-hand and new items.

"Second-hand, the quality are good compared to the new ones. So the price of second-hand and new ones, they differ. Mostly second-hand, the prices are too high compared to the new ones,” he says.

“Because when you see the second-hand, the printed things, they are original. The quality of second-hand is good. So the price for second-hand is more higher than new ones."

The trade in second-hand clothing, known locally as mitumba, supports an estimated two million livelihoods across the country, according to the Mitumba Consortium Association of Kenya.

Its chairperson, Teresia Wairimu, says valuable items often emerge in Kenyan markets hidden in piles of second-hand clothes imported into the country.

"If Kenya became a sorting hub, that would be the only possibility of now having to collect the luxury brands and re-exporting them back to Europe for resale. But since we are not sorting them here, we do not have a big number of them,” she says.

Wairimu adds that traders who have been in the market for years are experienced in identifying valuable items.

“Through their experience of maybe many years working in the market, they have sharp recognition of such items. So when one recognises that this is a brand, through informal negotiations, they are able to sell,” she says.

With excitement at a fever pitch as the FIFA World Cup gets underway, in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, Onyango proudly displays his varied collection of football shirts.