African designers are in the focus of the first fashion show in the festival in Rwanda

The combination of sports, music and fashion is a winning combination with fans and brands, and now the Giants of Africa Festival uses this zeal with its first fashion show.

Giants of Africa is a non -profit organization that uses basketball to strengthen African young people in 2003 by Masai Ujiri, deputy chairman and president of the Toronto Raptors. The understanding of sport born in Nigeria is a player in Europe and later a professional scout and a manager at the National Basketball Association.

More from WWD

In 2013, Ujiri became the first African general manager of a North American professional sports team when NBA stopped him in Denver Nuggets in 2010. Three years later, he was appointed Executive of the Year of the NBA in 2013 for his role as Executive Vice President and General Manager. Ujiri became president of the team in 2016 and left the team last month.

The event this week is the second annual one and returned to the city of Kigali, Rwanda on July 26. The event is expected to attract 320 young africa from 20 African nations and more than 20,000 spectators for a week of joint structure, culture, basketball, education and entertainment.

The fashion show planned for Thursday was presented by Ujiri’s wife Ramatu, who is a former model that grew up in Sierra Leone. With the show, she turns some different designers from the African continent into the spotlight to show how the styles vary depending on the region. The limelight will be at the work of Masa Mara, the designer Nyambo Masa Mara, born in Rwanda, will represent the giants of the Africa’s host country. After the creative raffles have lived in eight different African countries from ancestry craft techniques, indigenous patterns and traditional clothing.

Alia Bare, born in Nigerian, started sewing for her daughters and started her namesake label in 2015 after moving to Dakar. A former advisor for asset management, later studied at the Raffles Institute of Design in Singapore.

Afropian is another brand that is presented on the runway. Afropian in Addis Ababa is a fashionable fashionable brand Panafrican, which was founded in 2017 by designer Hortense Mbea. The founder of the company is her “love letter to Africa” and works with qualified craftsmen from 15 African countries and sources handmade materials, rare pearls and other natural materials that control the huge manufacturer of the continent. Threads from the African participants get an insight into the NEEMA capsule collection, the rark towel and other elements to reflect the African Forest.

The three designers have many people who check their collections when you consider that more than 600 guests will be in the audience, according to Giants of Africa Festival owners.

While the one -week festival has a crowd of sponsors for its numerous events, the fashion show “Threads of Africa” has no proven. However, the newly opened Zaria Court offered to organize the Runway Show. The open-air multi-purpose room was redesigned by the Nle design studio. The location was originally built for the apartment of the athletes due to its proximity to the sports complexes Amahoro Stadium and the BK Arena in Rwanda. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, it was the temporary center for the United Nations in Rwanda. The newly converted building includes a multifunctional dish for sunlight from events and retail space from repurposed shipping containers, a boutique hotel with 80 rooms, an indoor fitness studio, coworking rooms, soccer fields, a Calisthenics training course in the open, a public park and a children’s playground. The livestream reporting on the fashion show is not planned this year.

“After they grew up on the continent,” said Ujiri, “as Africans we know the landscape of what the children are going through. We know that they dream exactly as we did, and it really inspires me because these children have so much more talent and intelligence.

Best of WWD