AfricaIs aCountry

'I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad'

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

'I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad'

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzbvPa5npmo&w=560&h=349]

UPDATE: This video, “I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad,” by a group of American high schoolers focusing on Nigeria in an AP Comparative Politics class, is a minor Youtube hit. The song is a tongue in cheek rip-off of “Billionaire” by Travis McCoy and Bruno Mars. Why Nigeria? “Our teacher has gone to Nigeria multiple times and helped create the documentary Sweet Crude.”  (A few lazy blogs, cutting and pasting, kept writing that they were Russian.) The video has had more than 10,000 views since it was posted on June 6.  Some decent political insights, but what’s with the guy in the loincloth? On that, one of the students who made the video has responded on Youtube:

… the guy in the “diaper” has nothing to do with the video more of a way to make our class laugh. We know there are not all villages it just fit with the original song … This video in no way was meant to offend or make fun of Nigerians or their culture. We are sorry to all we offended.

Further Reading

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Leapfrogging literacy?

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Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.