From tinkering with electric circuits as a child to working on the iconic Lion Ozumba 551 electric vehicle project at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Chukwuemeka Eze has always been driven by curiosity and innovation. His journey into electric mobility has now given birth to Revive Earth, a startup that is reimagining how Africa can...

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Growing up on a family farm after the loss of his father, the founder of Farmstarck learned firsthand the backbreaking work and deep-rooted challenges facing African farmers. For over 15 years, he worked alongside his mother, witnessing the potential of agriculture stifled by limited market access, exploitative middlemen, and a glaring lack of financial inclusion....

The post How Farmstarck Is Revolutionizing Africa’s Agricultural Value Chain appeared first on TechTrends Africa.

Ideally, passion should be a prerequisite for artists. At least that’s what Tim Lyre believes. “I know it sounds cliché, but the truth is that you have to be passionate about doing it,” the Nigerian singer, rapper, and producer tells OkayAfrica. “You have to genuinely want it to be able to persevere and be consistent even when things are not going so well. I think that’s been most important, for me anyway.”

Lyre’s whole embrace of the process and dedication to creating music that can be appreciated for its singular vision is apparent in its output. Earlier this month, he released his third album, SPIRAL, a balmy soundscape featuring lilting neo-soul cuts, gently smoldering pop tunes, and smooth rap-indented highlights. The genre-hopping, now a trademark, is tied together by profound expressions of longing, loving, personal joys and anxiety, the constant search for self-fulfillment, and more.

Where his previous albums, Worry < and MASTA, were snappy affairs with runtimes hovering around the half-hour mark, Lyre’s latest is a double-sided effort that runs a few minutes shy of an hour. That extension doesn’t translate into any adverse effects; if anything, SPIRAL is a seamless listen that is effortlessly engaging. It’s an opus that reflects the accrued refinement and mastery Lyre has earned over the years, with some of his earliest releases dating back nearly a decade.

Lyre was among the dozens of young Nigerian artists who took to SoundCloud as their preferred platform for spontaneous drops, spurred by the need to create music outside what was popular in the mainstream. Across his early catalogue, Lyre ran through styles of music with a sometimes scattered twitch, to regularly strong results, if not wholly compelling.

“I think it was around that Covid-19 period,” he says, referring to the lockdown months as the period things clicked into place for him as a versatile artist. “I guess everybody just had enough time to reflect in general, myself included. I was in the studio as well, so I had time to think about how I wanted to sound. I’m someone who likes to try different things, and I had a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to take on and put all these things together. I’m someone who always just wants to improve constantly.”

The early 2022 release of Worry < was a remarkable showcase of Lyre as an artist with an elevated grasp of his abilities as a versatile artist, a streak that extended to MASTA and is foundational to the excellence curated on SPIRAL. The Tim Lyre experience since his first album has shown an artist comfortable with spotlighting his romantic scars, laying bare his yearnings, openly exploring his ambitions, and giving voice to his fears. Along with his ability to croon soulfully, rap with poise, and even dip into patois, these thematic threads make for a deeply relatable artist.

“[Introspection] is a very key part of what I’m trying to do as a musician,” Lyre says. “My favorite artists that I listen to, my best quality about them is the fact that they’re just so honest and vulnerable in their music, a lot of the time. There’s no shame when they’re talking about certain things. People can relate to that as well because we are all human beings; we all kind of go through the same things, you know, even if your circumstances are different. So I try to make it a point to keep that honesty about myself as much as I can.”

On “Rocketship,” the second song on SPIRAL, Lyre shares a heady portrait of the aftermath of a breakup where anxiety intertwines with an overreliance on weed. On the similarly forlorn “Storytime” with UK-based indie soul singer BINA, he asks, “What’s the worth of a love/that never gave you any peace of mind/until the day that it died?” It’s the kind of lingering thought that remains when you sit long enough to sift through an experience properly.

SPIRAL earns cohesion from being purposefully broad, a distinction that extends to the dozen featured artists, all well-placed and integral to the listening experience. “I’m lucky because I now get to work with more artists, and I’ve always been a collaborative type of artist,” Lyre says. “I’m also someone that just listens to a lot of music in general, so I feel like I know where things should go in terms of who should be on the feature.”

The collaborative spirit is aided in part by Lyre’s longstanding tilt towards community; MOJO AF, DAP the Contract, and Joyce Olong are frequent collaborators dating back several years. Meanwhile, Lyre credits a handful of the features to connections made by Outer South, the London and Johannesburg-based indie record label Lyre has been working with since his first album.

SPIRAL is “the biggest thing” Lyre and Outer South have done yet, putting more resources behind this album than his previous releases, seeing the traction the artist has slowly built up with a growing catalogue of quality releases. Those increased efforts include a headline show in late September at London’s Camden Assembly.

“I definitely want to perform my music as far as I possibly can, and just keep making good, quality music and collaborating with artists,” Lyre says as a ballpark answer for what he’s looking forward to next. He obviously wouldn’t mind scoring the kind of huge hit song(s) that vaults him from rising niche favorite to popular star, but it’s not an achievement he’s looking to force.

“With enough momentum and consistency, we can definitely get there. These things take time. It might happen one day, and people will think I’m an overnight sensation. I’m genuinely interested in making great music, and as long as that’s working out, I’m happy with life.”

Source

Lors d’une récente interview sur France Inter, le chanteur Tayc a créé la surprise en annonçant son intention de faire une pause dans sa carrière musicale après son concert symphonique prévu le 10 novembre à Paris. Face à Léa Salamé, il a déclaré sans détour : « C’est mon dernier concert. Oui je m’arrête. À …

L’article Tayc annonce une pause musicale, Booba réagit vivement est apparu en premier sur Africa Top Success.

La superstar de l’Afrobeats, Wizkid, a toujours eu la certitude de son succès, une vision qu’il a partagée lors d’une interview au Festival du film de Tribeca. L’artiste s’exprimait à l’occasion de la première de son documentaire très attendu, « Wizkid : Longue vie à Lagos ». Pour Wizkid, sa renommée actuelle est le fruit …

L’article Wizkid : de Lagos à la gloire, une vision inébranlable est apparu en premier sur Africa Top Success.

When Nigerian adventurer Ebaide Udoh took off from Kenya in 2023 on a motorcycle she had only just learned to ride, her goal was simple: see Africa before her body gave out. A near-fatal car accident in 2015, when she was just 23, left her with screws in her spine after the vehicle flipped several times, hurling her out and slamming her onto her back. She spent months in a wheelchair and vowed to herself that if she ever got her legs back, she would use them as much as she could.

“In my head, seeing the world just made the most sense because I have screws holding my back in place, and I know I won’t have this ability to move around forever. So I want to see as much as I can before I can’t anymore,” Udoh, now 33, tells OkayAfrica via Zoom from Dakar, Senegal.

Udoh lives with constant pain, but her will to move has never been stronger. She has covered 20 countries and 24,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) on her 250cc motorcycle. The first leg of her journey was a 9,000km (5,600 miles) trip from Mombasa, Kenya, to Lagos, Nigeria. The second leg she is now wrapping up took her through West Africa.

In June, she plans to ride from South Africa to Kenya to complete the final leg and claim a Guinness World Record.

Rewriting the Map

Born and raised in Ibadan, a city in southwestern Nigeria, Udoh studied criminology and social work but never worked in the field. A job in TV led her to radio, then to film production, and eventually to backpacking around West Africa. After COVID-19 shut down borders, she paused. When the world reopened, she didn’t just pick up where she left off; she leveled up.

In 2021, she decided to tour East Africa. “I planned to do five countries, one country per month. I went to Rwanda first, and spent a month there, but when I went to Kenya, I spent four months there. I just couldn’t leave; I loved it too much. In early 2022, I traveled back to Nigeria, sold everything I had, and moved to Kenya,” she says.

In Kenya, she bought and rebuilt a dusty old 1987 Nissan van from scratch, traveled around in it for a while, and then upgraded to a tuk-tuk. That still wasn’t enough. She bought a brand-new motorcycle, enrolled in a riding school for one week, and learned how to ride, with a few falls along the way. She rode the bike around for a while in Kenya for practice, almost 1,900km (1,200 miles). Then, she mapped out her first border-crossing trip on the bike. That first crossing from Kenya to Uganda left her screaming with joy. She hasn’t stopped riding since then.

“The funny thing is that until now, I don’t even know how to ride a bicycle, so learning to ride a motorcycle was even more challenging," she laughs. "But I’ve now done 20 countries on a bike, and I still can’t believe it."

Life on the Road

Udoh has a set of rules for her journey across Africa. She rides no more than four to five hours a day and never after dark. She chooses hotels for safety, avoids attention in remote areas, and keeps a strict code to stay under the radar. Her backpack holds five tops, two pairs of pants, and her photography gear.

"I travel light. I don’t announce myself when I reach a destination. I’m very low-key," she says. "Only people on the Internet know me. I follow these rules to try and keep as safe as possible.”

A typical day starts around 7 a.m., and she rides between 4 and 5 hours. “I can’t push it, even if I wanted to, my body would not allow me. 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., I’m already at my destination.”

Udoh has financed her entire journey independently, relying on her remote writing job to support her travels. However, as she prepares for the final leg from South Africa to Kenya, she is actively seeking sponsorship to alleviate the financial burden and bring greater visibility to her mission.

The Border Problem

Crossing borders from one country to the next is challenging, from visas to corrupt border officials who want bribes. "My Nigerian passport is one of the weakest in Africa," Udoh tells OkayAfrica. Visas are a major barrier. “I’m supposed to be in Morocco right now, but I’m stuck here in Senegal because I’ve been waiting six weeks for my Mauritania visa.”

Her next ride - South Africa to Kenya - will require 12 visas. “It’s wild to require visas to travel within the continent as an African. But I have no choice,” she says.

She has partnered with Youth Hub Africa and the African Union, and they launched a video project called One Africa. No Borders on her social media platforms, advocating for a visa-free Africa for Africans.

When Guinness Said No

In early 2024, Udoh applied to Guinness World Records (GWR) for the title of Longest Journey by Motorcycle in Africa (Female). Applying for a Guinness World Record is free, but the wait is long, and Udoh says she did not have the patience to wait the 12 to 20 weeks record-breakers wait to get a decision. “I don't know how to wait. My life is going, my health is going,” she says.

She paid a $1,000 fee to have her application expedited. The record exists. Multiple people hold similar titles. But her application was rejected.

“They said the category doesn’t exist. But it does. Just not for Africans.” After she emailed them back, listing the names of the people who currently hold similar records, GWR replied, saying that her journey needed to be entirely solo to qualify. And it is. More emails followed, with her proving that she was, indeed, traveling solo.

“Then they sent back one sentence after my long rant. ‘Oh, longest journey can only go through our business consultation service, and to apply for the business consultation service, you have to pay $10,000.’ I wasn't having it,” she says.

She went public, posting a video detailing the exchange with GWR on her social media platforms. The video went viral. Nigerians, and eventually Africans around the world, rallied behind her. It currently has over 20,000 comments on Instagram alone. GWR refunded her money, reinstated her application, and officially approved it on May 1, 2025, under the title: Longest Journey by Motorcycle in Africa (Female). The current record to beat is 30,000 kilometers (19,000 miles). By the time she finishes the final leg of her trip, she expects to reach 35,000km (22,000 miles).

The Bigger Picture

The GWR rejection inspired her to build her own platform: African People’s Records. Launching on Africa Day (May 25), it aims to recognize Africans doing extraordinary things. Applications are already rolling in, including one from someone attempting to cycle from Nigeria to the U.S.

She’s also starting the Ebaide Foundation, which will teach young girls skills like tailoring, hairstyling, and baking, then fund their start-ups.

The Record-Breaking Wave

Udoh’s journey is part of a broader movement. Across the continent, Africans are pushing for recognition, record by record.

This year alone, Tunde Onakoya, a Nigerian chess master, played nonstop for 64 hours in New York City’s Times Square to promote education and break the Guinness World Record for the longest chess marathon. Kanyeyachukwu Tagbo-Okeke, a 15-year-old autistic artist from Nigeria, painted the world’s largest canvas, using art to raise awareness about autism. Ashraf Mahrous, an Egyptian wrestler, pulled a 279-ton train with his teeth, earning global attention in March.

Why now? For some, it’s national pride. For others, it’s personal redemption. Social media fuels virality, but legacy is the real driver.

Udoh never wanted fame. She wanted visibility and representation. “If a girl with a spinal injury who never learned to cycle can break a world record, then what’s your excuse?”

Legacy in Motion

What would visiting all 54 countries mean for Udoh? "Dreaming about 54 countries is even too much," she admits. “But if I can do South Africa to Kenya, that’s 32 countries. Alone! Alone! Can you believe it?"

She hasn’t crossed the entire continent yet, but with 20 countries behind her and 12 to go, she’s on her way to becoming the first African, man or woman, to claim a world record for riding solo across 32 countries in Africa. Her name will be in the record books.

More importantly, she says, “I’ll know my accident didn’t define me. Every curveball life threw at me, I turned into gold."

The next leg of Udoh’s journey starts on June 12.

And Africa will be watching.

When Djimon Hounsou walks into the photography studio in Brooklyn early one summer morning, sparks of anticipation run through the space. As someone who’s managed to cultivate a largely private life, it’s not often the 60-year-old actor is seen opening up about his life and his career. While he does press interviews for the latest project he’s in, Hounsou is known to be intensely private, and in an age of oversharing, it has raised the mystique around him.

But he has come alone. Having flown in from his home in Atlanta for OkayAfrica’s fall digital cover, Hounsou has forgone the usual Hollywood proclivities to bring an entourage with him, and with it, the buffer that is usually created between celebrity and everyone else. And from the moment the camera starts snapping, it’s as if the enigma around him unspools.

Hounsou’s ability to work a look is unparalleled. He is effortless, fluid—a glide of his arm here, a brush of his hand there, and then, a flash of that magnetic smile. “My old days modeling… it comes back a little bit,” Hounsou grins, surveying the shots on the monitor.

Watching him in front of the camera, the flecks of gray in his beard catching the light, it’s clear what the late Thierry Mugler was drawn to 30 years ago when he made Hounsou — then sleeping on the streets of Paris — his muse, launching a modeling career that included high-profile runway shows and Janet Jackson and Madonna music videos.

It’s what we’ve always known to be true: when Djimon Hounsou is in front of a camera, magic happens. “It’s impossible to get a bad shot,” comments photographer Marquis Perkins between scenes.

In film, too, Hounsou has a knack for edrtnhancing both great and not-so-great projects (Baggage Claim, anyone?). His early roles remain etched in movie history — who can forget him pleading “Give us, us free,” in the courtroom scene of Amistad, or his leap to defend himself against Leonardo DiCaprio’s mercenary in Blood Diamond? He has a quiet ferocity that commands the screen.

“Sometimes I hear comments from studios like, ‘Oh, Djimon Hounsou is too noble to play this role,’” he shares. “It’s nice to hear that the studios are thinking that.” It signifies that he has achieved one of his early ambitions: to portray characters of integrity rather than ones that perpetuate stereotypes, particularly of Africans.

Over three decades and nearly 60 films, Hollywood has relied on the stature Hounsou brings to his roles; from Gladiator to How to Train Your Dragon Two, and a host of Marvel and DC properties in between. And yet, leading man status continues to elude him. Decades later, fans are asking, where is Hounsou’s starring role? Why is he still relegated to supporting characters with limited time on screen?

His fans continue to rally: “This man is in every movie I watch and he doesn't have the credibility he deserves,” @lino.rar writes under one of Hounsou’s Instagram posts. “You are soooo underrated!!! A massive talent!!” @yesgyal writes under another. Comments like these, along with articles calling out the “big-budget purgatory” he’s been in, reflect the widespread recognition of his undervalued talent.

This persistent underappreciation frustrates him, too. Last year, Hounsou told the Guardian that he felt “cheated” by Hollywood and that he didn’t feel he’s fairly compensated for his work. When asked if he still feels that way, he replies with candor, “Not much has changed since then, so I still feel that way. I stay with the same quote that I said.”

But he’s quick to balance this with gratitude. “I've been able to sustain a career, and I think that's something to highlight and acknowledge,” he says. “Even with whatever I feel is lacking.”

“I just keep it vague in terms of the [un]fair treatment of the industry because at the end of the day, I can't blame the studios,” he says. “The studios have been quite supportive of me and have embraced me a great deal.” His unassailable self-respect is evident. “I feel a sense of great pride to have lived on three different continents and to have survived in the film industry. It’s like swimming in shark-infested waters — you may make it, you may not.”

There’s a lot we know about how Djimon Hounsou made it. About how he grew up, the youngest of five, in Cotonou, hiding his thespian dreams from a family that wanted a more traditional academic path for him; how he left Benin as a young teenager with his brother; how he landed up homeless in the French capital; how he arrived in LA without speaking English to pursue acting. But there’s much we don’t, and will never, know about what it took to get here — the challenges he overcame, the trials that forged his character.

All of it has endowed Hounsou with a weight he brings to everything he takes on. Movie roles, yes, but anything he lends his voice to, from rhino poaching to climate change. When he speaks, you lean in — not just because he’s soft-spoken, but because you want to, need to, hear what he has to say.

Rather than focusing on what Hollywood hasn’t provided him, Hounsou directs his energy towards what he can offer the world. In 2019, he founded the Djimon Hounsou Foundation (DHF) to combat modern slavery and human trafficking, and to help Africans in the diaspora reconnect with their cultural, ancestral, and spiritual roots. “The aftermath of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is a loss of knowledge,” he explains. “If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you are.”

The foundation’s mission is deeply personal for Hounsou, arising from his own quest to grasp his history, which he didn’t learn much about as a youngster. “How can Afro-descendants relate to their heritage when people like me, who were born in Africa, often feel disconnected from their roots?” he questions.

With approximately 200 million people of African descent in the Americas — a legacy of the nearly 13 million Africans kidnapped and enslaved–Hounsou aims to help reclaim these lost connections. Without this knowledge, he believes, there is no way forward.

As he explains, “it’s kind of like a ship at sea, a beautiful ship with a beautiful motor that works perfectly fine and it can go fast. If you put it out at sea with no guidance, no captain directing it, that boat would just circle round and round, and eventually hit the shore or run out of steam and die down.” He adds: “If you don't know how to navigate yourself, it can harm you a great deal in your evolution."

It’s fitting that Hounsou uses this metaphor, as the film Amistad, about a 19th-century slave ship, even with its flaws, helped him realize the gaps in his own understanding and fueled his desire to foster reconciliation and reconnection.

In this spirit, the DHF launched Africa Reconnect, an annual series of music and sports events. The centerpiece is Run Richmond 16.19, a run/walk of either 6.19 or 16.19 kilometers, designed to highlight historical sites in Richmond, where the first slave ship is believed to have docked in 1619. This year’s event takes place on September 21. Future events will include two other locations, Liverpool in the U.K. and Ouidah, in Hounsou’s home country.

Each city features artist Stephen Broadbent’s Reconciliation Triangle, which, when connected, forms the Triangle of Hope — promoting forgiveness through acknowledgment and using reconciliation and justice to shape a new future. As Hounsou sees it, gathering at these sites to reclaim steps once taken forcibly and brutally, now willingly and joyfully, will help transform the spaces themselves.

“It’s a cultural event that lets you experience 400 years of Black history in America,” he says. “I thought, if we could do that in a place where some of our ancestors were lynched, if we come together like that regularly, we'll change the course of what took place there,” he says. At the Gate of No Return in West Africa, the aim is for participants to reverse the route of the slave trade, symbolically coming home to the roots of culture.

In working on Africa Reconnect, Hounsou found the disconnect between past and present jarring. “It’s the lack of connection that shocked me,” he says. “We can complain about Donald Trump, and the racism here in America, and the racism in Europe, but at the end of the day, all of those countries would not be self-sufficient without resources from Africa.”

“We owe it to ourselves to look to where we come from,” Hounsou continues, “and know that the continent of Africa is feeding the rest of the world.” To him, it’s empowering: “If you believe salvation only lies in the West, you’re setting yourself up for modern-day slavery.”

Hounsou is keenly aware of how narratives about Africa are evolving, especially with the global rise of Afrobeats. “I was a fan of African music long before it became popular in the West,” he notes wryly. And while he appreciates artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido, it’s the tribal music of his homeland that soothes his soul.

Though he misses Benin deeply, Hounsou hasn’t visited since 2019, but hopes to return by year’s end. In the meantime, he keeps the spirit of his homeland alive in his work. In the sequel to Netflix’s Rebel Moon, Hounsou’s General Titus sings a chant by Beninese singer and guitarist Lionel Loueke, meant to rally village warriors. “He wrote it in our dialect, Fon. It was beautiful,” says Hounsou, who performed the song in the film (remixed by Black Coffee as “Ode to Ancestors”).

Through directing and producing stories from Benin, and Africa at large, under the banner of his production company, Fanaticus, Hounsou further strengthens his ties to home. It’s also a way to deal with the limitations he faces as an “unsung hero of Hollywood,” as one Reddit user put it. “You navigate the water as it becomes rough,” he says. “Trying to keep a legacy intact is very hard in this industry. I have to oftentimes watch my back. It is treacherous. But nothing comes easy.”

His hard-won career is still without one thing, though. “It would be nice to win an Oscar,” he says. “It was nice to be nominated twice [for In America and Blood Diamond]. The third time — it seems like they forgot about me,” Hounsou adds with a sly smile.

Still, he wouldn’t change how anything has played out. He’d tell his young self today to “continue dreaming big.” For him, it all comes back to having a strong sense of self. “Nothing happens unless you can truly see and emotionally feel what you’re envisioning,” he says. “It’s all about having direction and a clear vision of what you want to achieve.” It worked for Hounsou’s early dreams, so it can only work for his future ones, too.

CREDITS:

Photographer: @marquisperkins

Lighting tech: @jpierrebonnet

Stylist: @tiffanistyles for This Represents

Market editor: @coralreefin

Fashion team: Elizabeth Fonseca, Myles Colbert, Will Lewis

Groomer: @brittywhitfield