Africa Is a Country

Black Star Jam

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Black Star Jam

By
Sean Jacobs

Tomorrow Ghana will try to the impossible: become the first African nation to go to the semi-finals of the World Cup.  Two African countries came close, but failed: Cameroon in 1990 (in a thrilling match with England determined by dodgy refereeing) and Senegal in 2002 (against Turkey). But Ghana seems to the real thing. But to do that Ghana has  to overcome Uruguay, a team who play with a goalkeeper, 8 defenders and two world class strikers.

A good way to get fired up for this match is with the World Cup hit “Football Jama” by Ghanaians Richy Pitch, Sway and M3NSA from London and Accra and in-between.

Trumpets and percussion played by some devoted Black Star fans round out the mix. Bring on Uruguay.

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/richypitch/football-jama-original-richy-pitch-feat-sway-m3nsa”]

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.