Africa Is a Country

Weekend Music Break, N°35

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

Weekend Music Break, N°35

By
Tom Devriendt

We hardly ever feature Brazilian music, and even less their take on Afrobeat. The above tune by the Abayomy Afrobeat Orchestra dates from last year, but the video’s new. Hope to see more from them. We’ve got 9 more videos lined up for you this week. Ugandan duo Radio & Weasel came up with this: 

Nigerian artists are flocking en masse to Cape Town’s seaboard to shoot their videos (taking cues from Congolese artists ten years ago). Clearly not just for “the light”. Davido’s ‘Gobe’ one more example:

Lagos’ SDC Commandant Obaifeiye Shem’s clumsy reply when asked on TV about the address of the website of his Service was that “my Oga at the top” knows it. The rest is history (as is he, it seems). Your viral Naija meme of the week:

M3nsa and Sena repping it for Ghana:

Tanzanian bongo flava from Belle 9 (call it pop): ‘Listen’:

Also from Tanzania is duo Aika & Nahreel who got themselves a dance hit with ‘Usinibwage’:

Kenyan bongo sounds, here’s ‘Bum Kubam’ by Nikki Wa Pili featuring G Nako. Quite the video:

More Kenyan Hip-Hop by rapper Rabbit in ‘Adisia’:

And switching gears, this video by Just A Band:

H/Ts this week to @Birdseeding, @nemesisinc and GetMziki.

Further Reading

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.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.