[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0mB59n0zBA&w=500&h=301&rel=0]

Oakland, California rap group The Hieroglyphics and Goapele singing about some kind of Soweto circa 2002.

You can go to the jungle/Go to the city/Visit Soweto/Live in the Bay or/Somewhere in between/But you’ll never be unseen … Maybe I’ll go to Angola or the Gold Coast/And blow smoke with the old folks cause they know most”

H/T Charles Leonard.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.