Kenyan artist Rabbit is working hard to get the word out about his new album Orutu Ya Masudi. The music video for ‘Yesterdays’ (and The Main Ingredient’s inspiration) will help.

My latest list of new African films or films with African topics. From now on I’ll start numbering them. So this is N°1. This list include “The Ambassador,” a Western set in Namibia, a sort of sequal to “eLollipop” and a documentary about Kenya’s version of “America’s Best Dance Crew.”

An older Cabo Snoop tune (kuduristas in Angola and elsewhere have been dancing to ‘Zagala’ since 2010) but it comes with a new video in which he gets away with dropping his name (and record) among the Kenyan Maasai, while effortlessly branding the South African clothing label Amakipkip in a next shot.

So rapper 50 Cent (accompanied by American journalists) was in Somalia and Kenya this week to visit people living in refugee camps displaced by the civil war with Islamic militants. Expect lots of ’50 in Somalia’ reports on US television. 50 Cent, who joins a long line of celebrities helping Africans (he is being touted […]

What’s going on at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB & Malaria (GFATM)? It recently canceled a new round of grants because funding has severely declined, and commitments made by donor countries have yet to materialize. As a result of the lack of funding, progress in many countries against the three diseases will be crippled until GFATM has the resources it needs. Last week Executive Director of the Global Fund, Michel Kazatchkine also resigned.

The Samburu of northern Kenya are pastoralists, and they are under attack. According to Survival International, two US-based charities — the Nature Conservancy and the Africa Wildlife Foundation — bought lots of land, from Daniel arap Moi. How did he get the land? Good question.

Three Kenyan videos to remember today’s Independence Day. Three popular tunes for our Independence meme. A ‘celebration’ of sorts turned out to be a useful lead for the first two. Madtraxx’s ‘Ida Waiter’ (with a nod to South African kwaito and that Prodigy video):

‘Kichwateli’ (‘TV head’ < Swahili) is one of the many chapters in the BLNRB project. Contributors are Just A Band (read Siddharta Mitter’s profile of the Kenyan trio here), street collective Maasai Mbili and the German electronic artists Modeselektor. The video was created by Bobb Muchiri (around the 5:00 mark neatly juxtaposing Nobel peace prize […]

Over the last two years, the NRBLN – BLNRB project has brought together German and Kenyan musicians, resulting in the eclectic album BLNRB – Welcome to the Madhouse. They’ve now also uploaded this video for the track ‘Msoto Millions’ by Jahcoozi (featuring dancehall collective Ukoo Flani). Follow the project on their blog — they’re promising […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywfyv5fdgM4 Your Music Break: from Nairobi. Via Kate Bomz

South Africa has an openly gay Judge serving on its highest court, The Constitutional Court. The Judge, Edwin Cameron, who has written a book about his sexual orientation also happens to be HIV positive and previously served for 8 years on the country’s High Court of Appeal. That’s an anomaly for court systems on a […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkDVUVosSgA From somewhere in American suburbia, the very frank, at times trite The Ten Minute Fix, a Youtube “talk show” series with an East African bias. Here’s the raison d’etre: “This idea was born from the sheer fact that we have professionals around us, we have good equipment around us but most importantly we just […]

Although the effect of blending the music by Shabazz Palaces and the images of documentary-in-the-making Tough Bond escapes me, for now, I am looking forward to seeing the end results (both of the documentary and the Shabazz Palaces first full album Black Up). Shabazz Palaces sure know how to pick their directors. http://vimeo.com/18653167 Remember the […]

Reporter Janny Scott in The New York Times, and the author of “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” writing about Stanley Ann Dunham: The president’s mother has served as any of a number of useful oversimplifications. In the capsule version of Obama’s life story, she is the white mother from Kansas […]