Africa Is a Country

'I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad'

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

'I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad'

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzbvPa5npmo&w=560&h=349]

UPDATE: This video, “I wanna be a Nigerian so freaking bad,” by a group of American high schoolers focusing on Nigeria in an AP Comparative Politics class, is a minor Youtube hit. The song is a tongue in cheek rip-off of “Billionaire” by Travis McCoy and Bruno Mars. Why Nigeria? “Our teacher has gone to Nigeria multiple times and helped create the documentary Sweet Crude.”  (A few lazy blogs, cutting and pasting, kept writing that they were Russian.) The video has had more than 10,000 views since it was posted on June 6.  Some decent political insights, but what’s with the guy in the loincloth? On that, one of the students who made the video has responded on Youtube:

… the guy in the “diaper” has nothing to do with the video more of a way to make our class laugh. We know there are not all villages it just fit with the original song … This video in no way was meant to offend or make fun of Nigerians or their culture. We are sorry to all we offended.

Further Reading

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O som da revolta

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From Cornell to conscience

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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.

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.