A YEMA campaign image posted by the brand in September 2026. Photo: YEMA / Instagram @yemacalif
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Yema Khalif: the Kibera-raised designer with a store in California and scholarships back home.
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.
Yema Khalif grew up in Kibera and now runs YEMA, a streetwear and athleisure brand in Tiburon, California, which he co-founded in 2016 with his partner Hawi Awash. The brand draws on East African heritage, and in 2019 Essence reported that it sold handcrafted footwear made by Kibera artisans and gave 20 per cent of online sales to scholarships for orphaned children in Kibera and Ethiopia.
From a film set to a degree
Khalif met the Danish actress Connie Nielsen on the set of the film Lost in Africa, which was shot in Kibera, and she helped him get to college in the United States. He took a scholarship to Dominican University of California, graduated summa cum laude in 2015, gave the senior address, and completed an MBA there in 2016.
The store and the giving
YEMA opened its Tiburon store on 15 February 2020. During the 2020 lockdowns the brand delivered groceries to about 150 families in Kibera and hygiene supplies to 350 girls. By 2024 it was planning pop-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and Haute Living reported that basketball player Klay Thompson and musician Carlos Santana wear the brand.
He has said he wants to give "a reason for the people of Kibera to laugh." His motto, as he told the Pacific Sun in 2023: "Be kind and spread hope, not hate." KNN could not confirm whether the Kibera-made footwear line is still in production.
Sources: Essence, Sep 2019; Dominican University of California, 7 May 2020; Haute Living, 6 Mar 2024; Pacific Sun, 8 Aug 2023; Tiburon Chamber of Commerce, 1 May 2020.
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.
Yema Khalif grew up in Kibera and now runs YEMA, a streetwear and athleisure brand in Tiburon, California, which he co-founded in 2016 with his partner Hawi Awash. The brand draws on East African heritage, and in 2019 Essence reported that it sold handcrafted footwear made by Kibera artisans and gave 20 per cent of online sales to scholarships for orphaned children in Kibera and Ethiopia.
From a film set to a degree
Khalif met the Danish actress Connie Nielsen on the set of the film Lost in Africa, which was shot in Kibera, and she helped him get to college in the United States. He took a scholarship to Dominican University of California, graduated summa cum laude in 2015, gave the senior address, and completed an MBA there in 2016.
The store and the giving
YEMA opened its Tiburon store on 15 February 2020. During the 2020 lockdowns the brand delivered groceries to about 150 families in Kibera and hygiene supplies to 350 girls. By 2024 it was planning pop-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and Haute Living reported that basketball player Klay Thompson and musician Carlos Santana wear the brand.
He has said he wants to give “a reason for the people of Kibera to laugh.” His motto, as he told the Pacific Sun in 2023: “Be kind and spread hope, not hate.” KNN could not confirm whether the Kibera-made footwear line is still in production.
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.
