Music Video Premiere: DJ Mellow and Steloo’s “Séké”
Africa is a Country is pleased to premiere the music video for “Séké” by DJ Mellow and Steloo:
Culture
Is it a good idea to use blackface to shame racism?
The Dutch filmmaker Sunny Bergman put on blackface to fight the racist caricature Zwarte Piet.
The photographer Paul Strand’s Portraits of 1960s Ghana
With Kwame Nkrumah's support, Strand’s last major photographic project was of Ghana over three months between 1963 and 1964.
Have we learned nothing?
Representing Africans as helpless and without dignity while showing ourselves as knowledgeable problem-solvers is the problem and not part of the solution.
Making Azonto: Local Roots and International Branches
As a DJ, having the platform of Africa is a Radio to showcase the music I’m
Giving politicians a lyrical trashing
As far as rap group Keur Gui are concerned, nothing has changed in Senegal.
Kenya gets an Art Fair
Kenyan artists have to grapple with a number of challenges, including how to use digital platforms to promote and sell art at a fair price.
Soweto Punk Revolution
A punk festival comes close to what one would imagine the DIY-embracing, eccentricity-accepting and obedience-ignoring CBGB’s of the ‘70s to have been like.
Nelson Mandela founded a beauty contest
Weekend Special is basically highlights of the stuff we shared via social media, i.e. Twitter and Facebook. We fell off but feel it's the right time to do it more regularly.
The limits of the idea of “alternative Africas”
How much energy should we invest in counterfactuals like: What if a diminished Europe, devastated by a plague, did not produce colonial powers, how might Africa’s history have unfolded?
5 Questions for a Filmmaker–Jihan El-Tahri
Legendary documentarian Jihan El-Tahri started her career as a journalist, working as a news agency correspondent
Moni
I remember being awe-struck by a picture I saw in on the Sunday papers somewhere around
The Digital Mandela
Finding ways to deconstruct the legacy from reality when it comes to South Africa's democratic president, Nelson Mandela.
They do know it’s Christmas
Bob Geldof doesn't need to do a #BandAid30 for Ebola. African musicians made a song already.
Africa is a Radio, Episode #7
This month's selection of tunes is from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Colombia, the United States, the U.K., Angola, and classics from East Africa.
The Bullshit Files: The “Mandela Ray Ban Sculpture”
Public art, the vandalism of Nelson Mandela’s legacy for commerce and the spoiling of public space in Cape Town.
Africa Through a Lens
An online archive of photos taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection housed in the UK's National Archives.
Sodade
There's something amazing about not being able to understand lyrics but still being able to comprehend what a song means.
You’re told that you will get used to it
A South African doctor working for MSF writes about her experience working in the Ebola zone in Sierra Leone.
Passports and nations
The writer Taiye Selasi doesn’t seem to realize there is a difference between identity as a subjective, biographical problem and identity as a legal and political reality.