A model in Ngamani Jewelry at Kibera Fashion Week 2024. Photo: Kibera Fashion Week
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Kibera Fashion Week: a runway on the railway line, then on matatu roofs.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects' own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Kibera Fashion Week was started by designer David Avido with the Goethe-Institut Nairobi, Nairobi Design Week, the Maasai Mbili art collective and EUNIC Kenya. In 2023 it was a pilot project of the European Union's European Spaces of Culture programme. Designers chosen for it get months of training, are paid for their work and show it in Kibera rather than in town.
Three outings
The first edition, in November 2022, put its catwalk on the railway line that runs through Kibera, lit by welding flash. Avido says more than 500 people came.
The second edition ran from 9 to 14 October 2023: open studios in Kibera, an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut, a film and panel at Alliance Française, and the main show on 14 October at Olympic Bus Terminus, on a three-metre runway built over the roofs of parked matatus, with six hours of shows. AFP reported 11 projects chosen from 376 applicants, 20 models and more than 100 garments; the organisers' own figures are higher. Designers were paid about US$1,000 each and models up to US$500. The 2023 designers included Pius Ochieng, whose collection was made from recycled electronic waste, Hellen Wanjiru Njenga, Mariah Kwamboka and Joyleen Chepngetich.
A November 2024 event at Olympic Bus Terminus brought ten designers, an exhibition and a film screening; rain cut it to a single day, 17 November. A documentary about the second edition premiered in Denver on 4 May 2024 and was screened at the University of Cologne on 3 July 2025. KNN found no record of a full edition in 2025 or so far in 2026.
"What we lack here is opportunities," Avido told AFP. Cristina Nord of the Goethe-Institut Nairobi put it from the other side: "The world can learn a lot from the people of Kibera."
Sources: AFP via Citizen Digital, 15 Oct 2023; European Spaces of Culture, 24 Oct 2023; Goethe-Institut press release, 2023; China Daily, 22 Jan 2024; KBC, 18 Nov 2024; Kibera Fashion Week; FashionUnited, Nov 2022; University of Cologne, Jul 2025.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects’ own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Kibera Fashion Week was started by designer David Avido with the Goethe-Institut Nairobi, Nairobi Design Week, the Maasai Mbili art collective and EUNIC Kenya. In 2023 it was a pilot project of the European Union’s European Spaces of Culture programme. Designers chosen for it get months of training, are paid for their work and show it in Kibera rather than in town.
Three outings
The first edition, in November 2022, put its catwalk on the railway line that runs through Kibera, lit by welding flash. Avido says more than 500 people came.
The second edition ran from 9 to 14 October 2023: open studios in Kibera, an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut, a film and panel at Alliance Française, and the main show on 14 October at Olympic Bus Terminus, on a three-metre runway built over the roofs of parked matatus, with six hours of shows. AFP reported 11 projects chosen from 376 applicants, 20 models and more than 100 garments; the organisers’ own figures are higher. Designers were paid about US$1,000 each and models up to US$500. The 2023 designers included Pius Ochieng, whose collection was made from recycled electronic waste, Hellen Wanjiru Njenga, Mariah Kwamboka and Joyleen Chepngetich.
A November 2024 event at Olympic Bus Terminus brought ten designers, an exhibition and a film screening; rain cut it to a single day, 17 November. A documentary about the second edition premiered in Denver on 4 May 2024 and was screened at the University of Cologne on 3 July 2025. KNN found no record of a full edition in 2025 or so far in 2026.
“What we lack here is opportunities,” Avido told AFP. Cristina Nord of the Goethe-Institut Nairobi put it from the other side: “The world can learn a lot from the people of Kibera.”
KNN Newsroom is the staff byline for stories written, rewritten and edited at the Kibra News Network desk. Where a story credits an outside outlet, the original source is linked at the foot of the piece.
