Africa Is a Country

Pure Bacardi house fun

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

Pure Bacardi house fun

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Hipsters Don't Dance

Hipsters Don't Dance Top World Carnival Tunes for November 2014.

Spoek Mathambo in July 2012. (Dave Lichterman, Via Flickr CC).

Back, but a little delayed due to our site maintenance and redesign are Hipster’s Don’t Dance with our November 2014 chart of hot World Carnival tunes. Check it below, and be sure to visit the HDD blog regularly for all their great up-to-the-timeness out of London.

DJ Spoko x War God

We don’t know whether it was the excellent Spoek Mathambo doc Future sounds of Mzansi that drew us back to the DJ Spoko LP but the whole thing, which came out in October is excellent. 85 mins of pure Bacardi house fun.

Dr Sid x Lady Don Dada

Not sure if this will get a single release but this cut off his excellent LP this year has been on repeat. After the Mavins successful 2014, we are excited to see what else is in store for this super group.

MI x Wheel Barrow (Feat Emmy Ace & Beenie Man)

MI’s new LP came out this month and we instantly gravitated towards this one. Not only does it feature the immortal Beenie Man but also features some dembow drums which we love.

Edem x Koene (Feat. Ice Queen & Lil Shaker)

This came out earlier in the year but we love it still. Magnum’s beat is great unrelenting but fun and Zambia’s Ice Queen delivers on of our fave verses of the year.

Hagan x M.O.T.Y Edit

Discovered on the rather excellent AIAC Radio show, this edit of the Schoolboy Q hit transforms the West Coat hit into some sparser and a whole lot more fun.

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.