AfricaIs aCountry

Friday Music Break, N°10

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

Friday Music Break, N°10

By
Sean Jacobs

British based Nigerian rapper Modenine starts off our weekly Friday Music Break. Here’s four more.

No we’re not including the video just below just because Flint, Michigan-born Tunde Olaniran is half Nigerian. Yes we are. But he is also talented. (Detroit MC Miz Korona makes a feature appearance.)

Nigerian pop gets a French makeover

More pop rap from West Africa: Veteran (yes, they’re been around for a while now) rappers VIP, from Accra, are now flogging fantasy, cars and girls. Computer graphics come in handy.

From about a year ago: rapper Pharoahe Monch gets help from the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble (or it’s the other way around).

See you Monday.

Further Reading

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.