African Child
The comedy "Get him to the Greek" is a forgettable vehicle for Russell Brand, except for the spoof music video "African Child" opening the film.
A screen shot of the "African Child" video in "Get him to the Greek."
I haven’t seen Get Him to the Greek, the new film starring P. Diddy, Jonah Hill and Russell Brand ((IMDB: “a record company intern is hired to accompany out-of-control British rock star Aldous Snow to a concert at L.A.’s Greek Theater.”) but thanks to the twitterverse (Ht Texas in Africa), I ran across this video of the opening sequence of the film about The clip details the rise and fall of Brand’s character, rock star Aldous Snow, after he releases “an album and an accompanying single about problems in Africa called ‘African Child’.”
It comes with non-sensical lyrics like:
“I have crossed the mystic desert
To snap pictures of the poor
I’ve invited them to brunch
Let them crash out on my floor.
My kitchen’s filled with flies
I’m crying out in vain
Like a little African child.
Trapped in me
There’s an African child
Trapped in me
There’s a little African child trapped in me.”
Watch the video:
Further Reading
After the uprising
Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.
Redrawing liberation
From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.
Beyond multipolarity
The SCO summit in Beijing revealed cracks in Western dominance—but whether they become openings for justice depends on African agency, not new patrons.
Who deserves the city?
Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.
The anticolonial roots of Kenya’s student strikes
From the colonial classroom to today’s exam halls, student strikes in Kenya are less outbursts than acts of political imagination—insisting that schools live up to their promise of justice and transformation.
The price of plugging in
Floating power plants from Turkey promise to solve blackouts in the Global South. But easy fixes come with political risks.
Djinns in Berlin
At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.
Colonize then, deport now
Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic.
The demise of curiosity
In an era when AI delivers the answer before the question is even asked, the sanctity of wonder is slipping away, and soon the act of asking might vanish entirely.
On Safari
On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.
Political musical chairs
A new opposition coalition in Nigeria claims to speak for the people, but its architects are from the same old political class seeking another shot at power.
What do we want?
In her latest novel, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie examines the contradictions of women’s desires, while leaving her own narrative blind spots exposed.
The limits of France’s racial memory
The French narrative of the Enlightenment still struggles to contend with the country’s racialized hierarchy in its cultural artifacts.
The battle over the frame
As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
The reopening of a border between Eritrea and Tigray masks a deeper realignment. As old foes unite against Ethiopia’s government, the risk of renewed war grows.
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.
Enemies of progress
Delayed, underfunded, and undermined, this year’s Women’s Africa Cup of Nations has exposed not just neglect but active sabotage from CAF and national federations.
Gen Z and the spirit of Mau Mau
Kenya’s largest-ever protests have drawn striking comparisons to the Mau Mau uprising. But for today’s movement to endure, it must move beyond the streets and invest in political education.