Bisola Folarin ’14 of Grand Prairie, Texas, models for the 2013 Inside Africa Fashion Show. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Celebrating the cultural wealth and diversity of Africa through performance and apparel, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College presents its fourth Inside Africa Fashion Show at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 7, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The Africana Club, a student group, sponsors and produces the event. It is free and open to the public but tickets are required, available at . For more information, please contact nkanu@bates.edu or bmabaso@bates.edu.

As in past years, the event showcases contemporary and traditional clothing from around Africa as well as performances of dance, music and spoken-word poetry reflecting African culture.

“This year we expect to have around 30 models,” says event founder Nicole Kanu, a senior rhetoric major from Little Rock, Arkansas. Whether through fashion or performance, the event will represent at least 15 nations, from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east, and from Morocco on the Mediterranean coast down to South Africa at the tip of the continent.

“These clothes aren’t just coming from thin air.”

“We’ve gotten clothes from faculty, from staff, obviously from students — those who are from the continent and those who have studied abroad,” she says. “And from members of the community.”

At the 2012 Inside Africa Fashion Show, Nerissa Brobbey ’15 models a Togolese boubou dress with matching head scarf. At right, Gulaid Abdullahi ’13 wears a traditional ma’awis and kofia hat. Photograph by Simone Schriger ’14/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

Kanu explains that this year’s show will emphasize the stories behind the outfits. “There will be a lot of personal narrative for the fashion and for the performances,” she says. “The people who own the clothes, you’ll hear what they feel about an outfit or the story of when they bought it. These clothes aren’t just coming from thin air.”

For example, Kanu herself is supplying an ensemble that her aunt, who lives in Nigeria, made for an elderly woman who belonged to Kanu’s church in Little Rock. The woman “was very interested in Nigerian culture, and African culture in general, and so that’s why she wanted it made.

“I think she may have gotten to wear it once, and then she died.”

For this year’s show, Kanu also hopes to include fashions by designers who came to Maine from Somalia and the Congo. This idea speaks to her overriding goal for the show, which has always been to connect people.

“In general, my passion lies in community development,” she says. “I’m very in tune with the fashion, but my point in having this show is really to bring people together, and I think that that’s one thing it has done.

At the 2013 Inside Africa Fashion Show, Jessica Clergeau ’15 of Somerville, Mass., heads the line of models waiting to walk. (Michael Bradley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Initially, I thought this might be a one-time thing. But people would come up to me at the beginning of the school year asking ‘When’s the fashion show?’ or saying ‘I want to model,’ and it’s their chance to be on the red carpet.

“It makes me happy to see them happy, so it has just kind of kept me going.”

Kanu launched Inside Africa in 2012, hoping to raise consciousness about the wealth and breadth of African culture. A rhetoric major, she will graduate from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in May, making this spring’s show her last, at least as a student.

Taking her place as producer the next time around is Bantu Mabaso, a first-year student from Mpaka, Swaziland. Kanu’s emphasis on community-building, says Mabaso, is what attracted her to Inside Africa.

“That’s what inspires me, and I feel that we can continue with it in so many different and innovative ways,” she says. “Fashion is an up-and-coming industry in Africa. There’s definitely potential for us.”

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s 2012 Inside Africa Fashion Show, sophomore Nerissa Brobbey models a Togolese boubou dress with matching head scarf. At right, Gulaid Abdullahi wears a traditional ma’awis and kofia hat. Photograph by Simone Schriger ’14/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

Reflecting the influence of African fashion abroad as well as the diversity of the continent’s own apparel, the second annual Inside Africa Fashion Show at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College starts at 8 p.m. Friday, March 15, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Sponsored by the Africana Club, a student organization, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact nkanu@bates.edu.

Some 30 students will model apparel from more than 10 African nations, expanding this year to include Senegal, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Gambia.

The program also includes a Swahili song sung a cappella by members of the Africana Club and two dance numbers — a medley of dance styles from across Africa and a Ghanaian Azonto dance, the upbeat hand-gesture style that went viral in 2011.

“I am inviting ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and the community to see Africa,” explains organizer Nicole Kanu. A sophomore from Little Rock, Ark., she is the daughter of a Nigerian couple. “Many look at Africa as one country and fail to see that it is a continent that contains many countries, cultures and backgrounds.”

In addition to presenting traditional garb, the show will look at the impacts of African fashion outside the continent. “A lot of clothes in America have African influences,” says Kanu, such as “tribal print” leggings and wildlife-print fabrics that are popular this season.

Inside Africa will “give students a chance to look at their closet and see — ‘hmm, where did this come from? What was the inspiration for this outfit?’ ” she says. “And oftentimes, if you research that designer or that line of clothing, you’ll see that it does stem from African fashion.”

Where last year’s show took the form of a fictionalized grand tour of the continent, this year’s edition will place more weight on fashion facts, says Kanu.

“It’ll be fun, definitely, but it’s meant to be informative and show a dimension of Africa that people don’t normally see here.”