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

Giants of Africa is a nonprofit that uses basketball to empower African youth that was started in 2003 by Masai Ujiri, vice chairman and president of the Toronto Raptors. Born in Nigeria, his understanding of the sport comes from being a player in Europe and later a professional scout, as well as an executive with the National Basketball Association.

In 2013, Ujiri became the first African general manager for a North American professional sports team, when NBA’s Denver Nuggets hired him in 2010. Three years later he was named the NBA’s Executive of the Year in 2013 for his role as executive vice president and general manager. Ujiri became the team’s president in 2016 and exited the team last month.

This week’s event is the second annual one and it returned to the city of Kigali, Rwanda, on July 26 and it will run through Aug. 2. The event is expected to attract 320 young athletes from 20 African nations, and more than 20,000 spectators for a week of community building, culture, basketball, education and entertainment.

Scheduled for Thursday, the fashion show was dreamt up by Ujiri’s wife Ramatu, who is a former model that grew up in Sierra Leone. With the show, she is turning the spotlight on a few different designers from the African continent to show how styles vary depending on the region. The spotlight will be on the work of Masa Mara, the Rwandan-born designer Nyambo Masa Mara, who will be representing Giants of Africa’s host country. Having lived in eight different African countries, the creative draws from ancestral craft techniques, indigenous patterns and traditional attire.

The Nigerian-born Alia Bare started off by sewing for her daughters and launched her namesake label in 2015, after moving to Dakar. A former wealth management consultant, Bare later studied at the Raffles Institute of Design in Singapore.

Afropian is another brand that will be showcased on the runway. Based in Addis Abeba, Afropian is a Panafrican fashion brand that was started by the designer Hortense Mbea in 2017. Meant to be her “love letter to Africa,” the company’s founder collaborates with skilled artisans from 15 African countries and sources handmade materials, rare beads and other natural materials that are true to the continent’s vast heritage. Threads of Africa attendees will get a glimpse of the capsule collection Neema that uses barkcloth and other elements to reflect the African forest.

The three designers will have plenty of people checking out their collections considering that more than 600 guests are expected to be in the audience at the by-invitation event, according to Giants of Africa Festival owners.

While the weeklong festival has a bevy of sponsors for its multiple events, the “Threads of Africa” fashion show does not have a designated one. However, the newly opened Zaria Court offered to host the runway show. The open-air multipurpose space was reimagined by design studio NLE. The location was originally built for athletes’ housing due to its proximity to Rwanda’s sports complexes Amahoro Stadium and BK Arena. During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, it was the temporary hub for the United Nations in Rwanda. The newly remodeled building includes a multifunctional court for a sundry of events, as well as retail space made from repurposed shipping containers, an 80-room boutique hotel, an indoor gym, coworking spaces, soccer fields, an outdoor calisthenics training course, a public park and children’s playground. Livestream coverage of the fashion show is not planned this year.

“Having grown up on the continent,” Ujiri said, “as Africans, we know the landscape of what the kids go through. We know they dream just like we did and it really inspires me because those kids have so much more talent and intelligence. They have ways to communicate now that we didn’t. This festival is about showing them there is a path. We want them to never stop dreaming.”