One contestant, Elizabeth James of Tanzania, said she had been forced to change schools as a child when people, staring and pointing, started trailing her home.

Another, Okwii Simon Peter, a 26-year-old Ugandan lawyer, said he was taking part to demonstrate that living with albinism does not make him different.

Valencia Bosibori, 25, a customer care executive at a telecom firm in Kenya, said she wanted to “reach people who don’t have that knowledge of what albinism is.”

They all took part in a groundbreaking beauty pageant, the first Mr. and Miss Albinism East Africa pageant, on Friday night in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.