Here’s ten new videos to get your weekend started. Some pop, some rap, some indie, but first, some dance (what’s in a name). Above’s Black Coffee latest, feat. Nomsa Mazwai and Black Motion on “Traveller”. Next: Owiny Sigoma Band (that’s Joseph Nyamungo, Charles Okoko and friends in London) put out this festival-vibes video for “Nyiduonge Drums” (which, oddly, is not on the record they recently released):

Congolese “Hustler” (his word) Fally Ipupa is “Back”; these loosely choreographed videos never cease to amaze:

Nigerian trio Weray Ent’s second single “Masquerade” features Ghanaian group Vibe Squad. Important disclaimer in the opening lines; what follows is a feast of styles:

Dochi and Ali Kiba bring the weekly Bongo sounds on “Imani”:

With the arrival of their first EP, Bells Atlas released a video for “Lovin You Down” — recorded while the band was on tour recently (and spent time in Miami during the International art event Art Basel):

Rokia Traoré could have come up with a different title for her new record, but the songs that are on there are magnificent. Quite politically engaged lyrics too, like much of what’s coming out of Mali over the past year. Production: John Parish. This is a first single, “Mélancolie”, and video:

UK youth broadcaster SB.TV put up a live video of UK artist (and AIAC household name) Akala, performing his track “Lose Myself”, a collaboration with Josh Osho — a new web series to watch:

Playing in London tonight (and pretty much everywhere else in Europe later this month; they sent us a reminder earlier this week) are Cuban combo Alexander Abreu y Havana d’Primera. Don’t miss it if you like your salsa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9NxNr1I1DU

And, finally, your moment of zen: this video for four-piece London band Woman’s Hour’s “To the End”, directed by South Africans Oliver Chanarin and Laurence Hamburger. Trampolinists are Siphiwe Mosoang and Xolani Nxumalo:

Woman Hour’s debut EP’s soon to be released on Parlour Records. Now watch that video again.

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.