AfricaIs aCountry

Black Star Jam

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

Black Star Jam

By
Sean Jacobs

Tomorrow Ghana will try to the impossible: become the first African nation to go to the semi-finals of the World Cup.  Two African countries came close, but failed: Cameroon in 1990 (in a thrilling match with England determined by dodgy refereeing) and Senegal in 2002 (against Turkey). But Ghana seems to the real thing. But to do that Ghana has  to overcome Uruguay, a team who play with a goalkeeper, 8 defenders and two world class strikers.

A good way to get fired up for this match is with the World Cup hit “Football Jama” by Ghanaians Richy Pitch, Sway and M3NSA from London and Accra and in-between.

Trumpets and percussion played by some devoted Black Star fans round out the mix. Bring on Uruguay.

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/richypitch/football-jama-original-richy-pitch-feat-sway-m3nsa”]

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.