The Africell Impact Foundation has hosted a conversation with Grammy Award-winning DJ and producer Black Coffee at the University of Oxford: one of the world’s great stages for ideas.
The Oxford Africa Conference brings together thought leaders, policymakers, professionals and scholars for ambitious conversation about Africa’s future. This year’s edition carried the theme “Anchoring Africa: Grounded Leadership in the Age of Disruption.”
Black Coffee (real name Nkosinathi Innocent Maphumulo) has built his career over two decades, riding the growing global interest in South African house music to become arguably Africa’s biggest DJ, with accolades including a Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. He has performed widely across Africa, including in Angola, where Africell operates.
Black Coffee’s message at Oxford went beyond any one country, and even beyond music as an industry: “As a continent, we still underestimate the power of music; the power of how much it can change the economy, boost tourism, bring a spotlight to a culture. We have so much talent. We just have everything except for infrastructure.”
Sam Williams, Africell’s Group Communications Director, said: “Black Coffee’s words captured something we feel strongly: namely, that Africa’s cultural output is an economic force, not just an artistic one, and that good telecommunications is part of the toolkit for unleashing it.”
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Image credits: Sam Allard, Fisher Studios