Africa Is a Country

Latest episode of Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s ‘My Song’ series features politically engaged Senegalese rappers

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

Latest episode of Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s ‘My Song’ series features politically engaged Senegalese rappers

By
Africa is a Country

Fed up with what a group of young Senegalese describe as the state of mind of their society being one of ‘defeat’, they decided to start a collective called Y’en a Marre, meaning ‘we are fed up’. Although they came from all walks of life – a mishmash of musicians, activists and journalists – they had one thing in common: to bring about change in Senegal. One way to do so was through music. So the hiphop component of the collective decided to write the song ‘Dox ak sa gox’, meaning ‘To work with your community’.

The Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) series “My Song ” interviews musicians about their music. (Previous episodes are archived here). In the latest episode of the series My Song, Senegalese rappers Djily Bagdad and Thiat reflect on their song and the work of Y’en a Marre.

For a French interview with Y’en a Marre member Fou Malade, click here

* My Song, the series, is produced by Africa is a Country’s own Serginho Roosblad. It is filmed by Sandesh Bhugaloo and edited by Serginho. Sophie van Leeuwen helped out on this episode.

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

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.