Africa Is a Country

Independence Day in Guinea

Independence Day in Guinea

By
Tom Devriendt

Since we’re back to our Independence Day meme, yesterday was Guinea-Conakry’s day. (Yes, Sean’s fault again.)

Looking south from where I live, it’s tempting to think of, say, DJ Oudy as being the big star. But that’s because Paris lies somewhere in between here and Guinea. And the Guinean diaspora does a good job at clouding the French perception. Europe offers them all the right studios, the marketeers and the bling. And the resulting videos are quite something. (You must have seen ‘Tchoumakay’ by now). In Guinea though, they’re listening to Tiranké Sidimé:

Les Jumeaux:

And Momo:

I’m going for the Guinean sounds. Here’s to a fair election later this year.

Further Reading

Coming home

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Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.

From Naija to Abidjan

One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d’Ivoire today.

De Naïja à Abidjan

Un pays est anglophone et l’autre est francophone. Quoi qu’il en soit, entre 1 et 4 millions de personnes d’origine nigériane vivent aujourd’hui en Côte d’Ivoire.