Africa Is a Country

All of the party

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

All of the party

By
Hinda Talhaoui

A mix of French hip hop and smooth R&B dominates this installment, Number 5, of music from the French capital. Paris is a Continent.

David Beckham playing at his last club, LA Galaxy in the MLS (Anna Enriquez, via Flickr CC).

Not sure what it says about France that the headlines in Paris are dominated by stories that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who sexually assaulted an African woman working as a cleaner in a New York City hotel, is being portrayed as a victim of a conspiracy. To top it all, David Beckham, a semi-retired 36-year-old English player is entrusted with bringing back glamor to French club football (he signed with Paris Saint Germain).

Meanwhile, a mix of French hip hop and smooth R&B dominates this installment of music from Paris.  This week is a short offering since I am going on vacation today.

First up,  the Tunisian rapper Sniper featuring Sexion d’Assault on “Blood Diamondz.” (You may remember that Sexion d’Assault was, until recently, known more for their homophobic outbursts than their music. They claimed to have left hate behind.)

For now, here are two: first, Marseille-born singer Kenza Farah featured on the song “Tous de la Fête” by Dibi Dobo (his family comes from Benin). Kenza Farah’s family is Kabyle from Algeria. Their collaboration features the pan-African spirit that exist among Africans, whether from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, in France.

Then there’s Evanz, a singer discovered by La Fouine, and her song “Ton Silence,”  The song features rapper Soprano.

 

Further Reading

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.

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.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.