Africa Is a Country

Friday Music Bonus Edition

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

Friday Music Bonus Edition

By
Tom Devriendt

So drawn into the video (a plethora of faces, personalities and historic moments) Atlanta trio Algiers made for ‘Blood’, I forgot to pay attention to the lyrics the first time seeing it:

Yanigga recorded the video for ‘Dans un ghetto près de chez toi’ (“In a ghetto near you”) in Logbaba (Douala, Cameroon):

Fatoumata Diawara’s been busy touring since releasing her first album last year. Translation of her lyrics on ‘Sowa’ can be found here. Unplugged in Holland:

Michael Kiwanuka’s song ‘I’m Getting Ready’ comes with a new video:

That new video (we blogged about here) for K’Naan’s “Nothing to lose” featuring Nas, shot in Toronto. The video, in which Nas, K’Naan and an entourage of young Somali-Canadians, includes a visit to the Somali Social Club and K’Naan making a plug for countries in the Horn of Africa:

And, finally, AIAC favorite and Nas collaborator Damian Marley’s latest ‘Affairs of the heart’:

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Trump tariffs and US Imperialism

Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.