Africa Is a Country

Black Bazar

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

Black Bazar

By
Tom Devriendt

Alain Mabanckou’s 2009 novel Black Bazar spoke successfully to and about the African diaspora in France, their daily hustle, fashion, style and language. All through the eyes of the Congolese migrant nicknamed ‘Fessologue’, sapeur and pub philosopher, and arguably the author’s alter ego. As a follow-up to the novel, Mabanckou now has produced an ambitious music album (“trying to change the way in which African music is perceived,” he says) with Congolese musicians Modogo Abarambwa and Sam Tshintu. Other contributing artists come from Cuba, Colombia, Cameroon, the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville and Senegal. The above music video shows us what to expect (and Mabanckou gets his cameo).

Further Reading

After the coups

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

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.