Africa

1. Educating coders
2. Magical kingdom
3. On the road
4. Honoring the land
5. “One Love”

Also, the uncomfortable debate over who qualifies to be Miss South Africa.

Hello! Welcome to Semafor Africa Weekend where I promise this is the last time till the next time that I indulge in Fela Kuti folklore. A couple of days ago it marked 27 years since the legendary Afrobeat creator joined the big band in the sky.

Regular readers might remember, back in May 2023, we had a fun Q&A with Rikki Stein, Fela’s last manager. At the time I marveled at his many tales through his 60 odd years in the music business. Well, as promised then, he’s put his many anecdotes from the road together in a great autobiography which I’ve been immersed in over the last few days.

We’ve pulled out an excerpt for you below, but believe me when I say it doesn’t do nearly enough justice to a character who has toured with, or managed, artists from Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead to Guinea’s Les Ballets Africains and Algeria’s Rachid Taha. But of course, he is best known for his work with his late friend Fela, and more recently for his efforts with the Kuti family to manage the Fela legacy.

🟡 This week Martin looked at concerns in African capitals that young people have been organizing to copy the protests seen in Kenya — that seems to be playing out in Nigeria. In Addis, Samuel Getachew looked at the likely outcome of Ethiopia’s decision to float its currency.

🟡 🟡 Heads-up for readers, for the rest of August we’ll be sending newsletters twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays. We’ll be back to our thrice-weekly run in September. Thanks for all your support!

Building in-demand tech skills

The number of Ethiopian youth set to benefit from a nationwide digital skills training initiative dubbed “The 5 Million Ethiopian Coders Initiative,” launched by the government in partnership with the United Arab Emirates. The initiative will encompass three courses: Programming Fundamentals, Data Science Fundamentals, and Android Kotlin Developer, all provided for free on Udacity, a US-based online learning platform. The partnership between Ethiopia and the UAE comes soon after the countries’ central banks signed a bilateral currency agreement valued at up to 46 billion birr ($817 million) as the two nations build closer ties.

Imagining an African magic kingdom

Animated superhero series, Iyanu, is slated to premier on Showmax in 2025, adding to a growing list of modern animation features set on the continent.

The comic series adapted from award-winning filmmaker Roye Okupe’s series, “Iyanu: Child of Wonder” — published by US comic book publisher Dark Horse Comics — is centered on Nigerian culture, evident through music and mythology that are central to the storyline. It follows the experiences of a teenage orphan girl, Iyanu, in the magical kingdom of Yorubaland, who discovers that she has superhero powers and the ability to save her society from evil.

Iyanu’s production by Los Angeles-based Lion Forge Entertainment is also a testament that Hollywood is paying more attention to animation from across Africa.

In July 2023, Netflix launched its debut original African animated series, Supa Team 4, created by a Zambian animator and set in a neo-futuristic Lusaka. Earlier this year, Iwaju, a limited animated series imagining a Lagos where flying cars overcome the challenge of crowded streets, became Disney’s first feature set in Nigeria.

Iyanu will be available on Showmax across 44 African countries, according to an announcement by Lion Forge Entertainment.

— Muchira Gachenge

Touring with Fela Kuti

In April 1986 Fela Anikulapo Kuti was released from prison by the military government of Ibrahim Babaginda, 18 months into a widely discredited five-year sentence. Soon after, he went on a world tour with his entourage of more than 50 people. Rikki Stein, his manager, picks up the tale in Seattle, after they were kicked off a flight because someone smoked in the plane’s bathroom.

However, as Fela often said, “Even bad can be good.” The story of our being removed from the American Airways flight appeared the next morning in The New York Times and then spread to newspapers and radio shows across the US, leading to a rush for tickets. The rest of the American tour was completely sold out, save for Austin, Texas, where it snowed heavily for the first time in memory.

The gentlemanly promoter, Louis Jay Meyers, despite the poor turnout, paid in full. The next year, Louis went on to become the founder of the gigantic South By Southwest annual destination for creatives across the globe. We moved on from Seattle to Los Angeles. That was where I had my introduction to goro. This was a concoction that Fela had invented. Contrary to legend, claiming marijuana seeds caused all kinds of malaise, from sterility to erectile dysfunction, Fela’s goro paste was made by slow-cooking the seeds for days on end, adding molasses and heaven knows what else to produce a thick black paste (which on close examination turned out to be dark, dark green.) It was consumed by either eating a teaspoonful or smearing it on the outside of cigarettes.

Just before going on stage that day, Fela asked if I’d like some. I nodded my assent. He gave me a tablespoonful. It tasted awful. After delivering Fela to the stage, I went to take up my usual position at the sound desk which, in this vast cavern of a venue, was at least 250 feet from the stage. I was immersed in the sound until, looking up, I saw Fela flying towards me, stopping no more than two feet away and then, whoosh, dramatically disappearing into the distance. I was transfixed, gobsmacked, hearing the music with a never-before experienced clarity.

Thereafter, whenever I left Lagos bound for London I always carried a pot or two of Fela’s goro. Sadly, the recipe died with him.

An excerpt from Moving Music: The Memoirs of Rikki Stein (Wordville)

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Searching for answers on Africa’s land

Zimbabwean-born architectural designer and researcher Thandi Loewenson has focused on projects that confront inequality and the status quo throughout her career. The co-founder of the architectural collective BREAK//LINE continued that streak when she was named the winner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design’s (GSD) 2024 Wheelwright Prize in June.

The prize came with a $100,000 grant which will support Loewenson’s research project titled “Black Papers: Beyond the Politics of Land, Towards African Policies of Earth & Air.” It focuses on the place of land in contemporary Africa and its relation to people and socio-economic structures. It will look at seven African countries; DR Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Harvard GSD said in its announcement that the Black Papers aimed to “shape both policy discourse and public perception.”

“The question of land, and its indelible link to African liberation and being, echoes across the continent as a central theme of liberation movements and the postcolonial governments that followed,” Loewenson said following the win.

— Martin K. N. Siele

Nigeria loses a “national treasure”

Legendary Nigerian singer, actor, and journalist Onyeka Onwenu died on Tuesday at 72. The sudden passing has elicited an outpouring of tributes including from the Nigerian president who dubbed her “the Queen of Songs.”

Onwenu made her name in the 1980s with songs that blended genres from romance to motivational tunes encouraging peace and national unity — notably One Love — as her rise coincided with the return of military rule following Nigeria’s aborted second republic.

Later as a journalist with the state broadcaster, she narrated and featured in a groundbreaking documentary, Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches, co-produced with the BBC. Her acting career included supporting roles in the movie adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun, the novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, and in the Netflix original Lionheart.

“It was a privilege to grow to know her, she was a national treasure,” said Obi Asika, director-general of Nigeria’s National Council for Arts and Culture. He had been working on a biopic project with Onwenu.

— Alexander Onukwue

Weekend Reads

🇿🇦 A debate on nationality and identity has been rife in South Africa in recent weeks, following the entry of beauty pageant contestant Chidimma Adetshina in the Miss South Africa contest. For The Guardian, Rachel Savage writes of the online onslaught and xenophobic treatment of Adetshina, 23, because of her Nigerian heritage. She was born in Soweto and has a Nigerian father and South African mother with Mozambican roots.

🇰🇪 In an essay on political assessment of the contemporary Kenyan ruling elite, for The Elephant, Wandia Njoya traces what she describes as a deterioration in the standards of Kenyan politics. She notes that “grandeur, obscene wealth, crass contempt and spectacular violence against citizens” have been normalized as the political culture of Kenya.

🌍 Are global credit rating agencies to blame for Africa’s debt woes, and resultant underdevelopment? Reuters investigated the genesis of debt problems for sub-Saharan African nations since the early 2000s. Several African leaders now largely attribute it to a bias of low rating scores by the established credit rating agencies and subsequent expensive loans from international investors.

🇳🇬 Digital experts and economic analysts say the rise of stunt philanthropy in Nigeria can be linked to the country’s ongoing economic crisis, Jesusegun Alagbe writes in Rest of World. Alagbe notes that popular content creators are following in the footsteps of American YouTuber MrBeast credited for pioneering a genre where acts of kindness are turned into spectacles to garner views and ad revenue.

Week Ahead

Aug. 5-9 — Linguists and language researchers will convene in Nairobi for the World Congress of African Linguistics to discuss the use of African languages for development.

Aug. 6 — South African lender Nedbank will release half year results, in which it expects to produce slightly lower headline earnings growth.

Aug. 6 — The Central Bank of Kenya will announce its latest lending rate decision. In June, the bank held its benchmark lending rate at 13%.

Aug. 6-15 — The General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, the first to be held in Africa, will take place in Cape Town.

Aug. 7 — South Africa’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange will report half-year results.

Aug. 11 — Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame will be sworn in to office after being re-elected in July.

• Russia frees WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich in prisoner swap with US.
• Will the Fed rescue clean energy?
• Anyscale, software provider for OpenAI, hires a new CEO to boost sales.

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Happy 64th independence day to the people of Burkina Faso!! (Aug. 5) 🇧🇫

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— Yinka, Alexis Akwagyiram, Alexander Onukwue, Martin Siele, and Muchira Gachenge