More from 'The Music Is Black'...

 

My visual insight:

-

Curator Jacqueline Springer

The V&A East opened in Stratford, London, UK, on Sat. 18 April 2026.

The exhibition runs until January 2027.

-

More to come in an article and a video, and in my podcast next week.

 

'THE MUSIC IS BLACK'

 

The newest museum to open in London opens tomorrow, Saturday 18 April 2026, with a special exhbition on Black British music!

I was at the press viewing.

'The Music is Black: A British Story' retells 125 years of Black music-making in Britain at the new Victoria & Albert Museum in Stratford. 

"Spanning four continents, this is a story of excellence, struggle, resilience and joy," the museum promises.

It's a travel through time as over 120 tracks from every era play directly through a headset. 

More than an exhibition, this immersive sound experience explores the power and impact of Black "British music."

INSIGHT IN PICTURES:

The curator, Jacqueline Spinger, was a wonderful interviewee!!

More soon, in my RFI podcast.

-

And a few more pictures from Bristol:

More on Sudan, after three years of war and the world's worst humanitarian crisis

 

New podcast episode:

Spotlight on Africa

Sudan: Three years of war and new reports of meddling by Ethiopia

https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-on-africa/20260414-sudan-three-years-of-war-and-new-reports-of-meddling-by-ethiopia

This week in Spotlight on Africa: Sudan’s war enters its fourth year, with no sign of easing since fighting erupted on 15 April 2023. The conflict is intensifying, amid fresh accusations of foreign interference – most recently involving Ethiopia.

Details here;

https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-on-africa/20260414-sudan-three-years-of-war-and-new-reports-of-meddling-by-ethiopia

Billions in military spending

 

People are about to starve at the 4 corners of the Earth and more regimes increase military spendings, while the US uses billion to re-visit the Moon... 

Sometimes, I feel our world is so senseless, it's beyond what explanations or reporting can handle...

'Fatna, une femme nommée Rachid'

 

Un beau documentaire sur la lutte pour les droits des femmes et des anciens prisoniers politiques au Maroc, avec la militante Fatna El Bouih, réalisé par Hélène Harder 

Le film a été montré en France samedi dernier au Panomra des Cinémas du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient, à Saint-Denis.

-

[FR] Dans 'Fatna, une femme nommée Rachid', tiré du récit de Fatna El Bouih paru en 2016, Hélène Harder nous dresse le portrait au présent de cette militante marocaine des droits humains. Le parcours de cette icône du militantisme dans les rues de Casablanca nous raconte aussi le combat des femmes d’aujourd’hui dans un pays conservateur. 

[EN] In 'Fatna, a woman named Rachid', based on Fatna El Bouih's 2016 memoir, Hélène Harder paints a portrait of this Moroccan human rights activist in the present day. The journey of this icon of activism in the streets of Casablanca also tells us about the struggle of women today in a conservative country. 

Un film de  Hélène Harder 

Maroc, France, Belgique – 2025 

Ancienne disparue durant les « années de plomb », Fatna El Bouih poursuit aujourd’hui discrètement de nombreux combats au Maroc. 

Dans un contexte conservateur où la répression perdure, nous la suivons à travers les rues de Casablanca d’une action à l’autre. 

C’est l’histoire d’une survivante qui poursuit son rêve d’enfant : avoir un rôle politique, envers et contre tout et ne plus disparaître. Le combat quotidien et permanent d’une femme extraordinaire, en quête de justice, de mémoire et de transmission.

-

Spotlight on Africa podcast - The Kenyan landlords helping fight gender-based violence

 

This week, in Spotlight on Africa, we feature the work on CFK Africa to fight gender-based violence in Kibera, Nairobi:

In Kenya, the charity is working with landlords to fight violence against women – in particular the one experienced in overcrowded, impoverished areas.

To know more about how the programme works and what CFK Africa and landlords in Kibera can do against gender-based violence, we have in this episode: Siama Yusuf, senior programme officer for girls empowerment, at CFK Africa, and Geoffrey Wesonga, a landlord in Kibera, who joined the programme.

Photo: CFK Africa

Spotlight on Africa - The Kenyan landlords helping fight gender-based violence

Listen here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-on-africa/20260331-the-kenyan-landlords-helping-fight-gender-based-violence

or here on Apple Podcasts.

or - newly now! - on YouTube:

Sudan: Sexual violence used as 'war weapon' in Darfur

 

Sudan: Rebels using sexual violence in Darfur as 'war weapon', says MSF

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militias are using sexual violence as a "weapon of war" in Darfur to control civilians, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) showed in a major report released on Tuesday.

The report, titled “There is something I want to tell you…”: Surviving the sexual violence crisis in Darfur, provides the most comprehensive documented accounts of sexual violence in Sudan’s war, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said.

Victims and survivors testified and MSF medical programmes gathered data that highlight clear patterns of widespread and systematic abuse.

Women in Darfur, Sudan, are demanding protection, care and justice as sexual violence continues across the region, both in active conflict areas and far beyond frontlines, MSF said in a statement after releasing the new report this Tuesday.

At least 3,396 victims and survivors of sexual violence sought treatment in MSF-supported facilities across North and South Darfur between January 2024 and November 2025, MSF said, though the NGO warned that this represents only a fraction of the true scale.

Many victims and survivors cannot safely reach care, it added.

And women and girls accounted for 97 per cent of victims and survivors treated in MSF programmes.

Three years of war and suffering 

The Sudanese army and RSF have been fighting in a brutal war for almost three years, since April 2023. The conflit has already killed tens of thousands, and displaced at least 13 million people.

It has been also marked by widespread sexual violence.

"Sexual violence has become a pervasive and defining feature of the conflict while also persisting beyond active front lines," the report states.

"This war has, in many ways, been fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls."

Displacement, the collapse of community support networks, lack of access to healthcare, and entrenched systemic gender inequalities also enable such abuse to proliferate across Sudan.

Testimonies from 150 victims during the RSF's April attack on Zamzam camp, which sheltered nearly 500,000 people, indicate they targeted ethnic groups, particularly the non-Arab Zaghawa community.

A 28-year-old woman said: "They were four and each raped me, while some held my arms and others my legs".

Other survivors were in El-Fasher, the army's last stronghold in the sprawling western region that fell in October 2025 and where a UN fact-finding mission reported "acts of genocide."

'A war fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls'

Many women described being assaulted away from the frontlines while simply going about their daily activities: on roads, in farms, markets and displacement camps.

"There is no way to stop the rapes," a 40-year-old woman in Jebel Marra said. "The only way is to try to stay home, and to not go out as much."

MSF also identified 732 survivors of sexual violence in displacement camps in the month between December 2025 and January this year, some assaulted while fleeing or within the camps.

"This war is being fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls," said Ruth Kauffman, MSF's emergency health manager describing the assaults as a "defining feature" of the conflict entering its fourth year in April.

MSF calls on all parties to the conflict to cease and prevent sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable, including the RSF and their supporters.

"We also call on the United Nations, donors and humanitarian actors to urgently scale up health and protection services in Darfur and all of Sudan," the NGO concluded.

(with news agencies)

-

Read also: Sudan's El-Fasher 'an epicentre of human suffering', UN says

Listen to: our podcast episode on Sudan as the war entered its third year - Spotlight on Africa - by RFI English 

The New War in the Middle East: International, Regional, and Domestic Dimensions

 

The New War in the Middle East: International, Regional, and Domestic Dimensions

To provide a rigorous and multifaceted analysis of The New War in the Middle East: International, Regional, and Domestic Dimensions, CERI Sciences Po is organising a dedicated event structured around 2 complementary conferences.

The new war in the Middle East, triggered on 28 February by the Israeli-American attack on Iran, has once again plunged the region, as well as the international system more broadly, into a period of significant uncertainty. 

To provide a rigorous and multifaceted analysis of this major development, while maintaining the necessary analytical distance, CERI and MENA Programme are organising an event structured around two complementary conferences. 

The first, to be held on 30 March, will examine the international dimensions of the conflict and its global implications. The second, on 31 March, will focus on the regional dimensions of the conflict as well as its repercussions for Iranian domestic politics. 

Taken together, these two sessions trace a progression from the global level to regional configurations and domestic political consequences, bringing together scholars with diverse areas of expertise and perspectives.

New War in the Middle East: International, Regional, and Domestic

March 30th 17h30-19h30 The New War in the Middle East : International Dimensions > room Leroy Beaulieu-Sorel, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris Moderator : Victor Mallet is a senior journalist at the Financial Times. A career foreign correspondent, he has reported for over three decades from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including as the Financial Times's Middle East correspondent, where he covered the 1990–91 Gulf War and was notably present in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion in August 1990. He is also the author of several books, most recently Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe (Hurst, 2026). Speakers : Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "How about: Perspectives from Africa on the new Middle East war?" Nicole Grajewski , Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "US-Israel strategic alignments and Russian perspectives" Christophe Jaffrelot, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "Can India be equidistant from Israel, Iran, Russia, and the US? " Stéphanie Balme, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "China’s Strategic Positions" Benoît Pélopidas, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "Counterproliferation by force, past and future"  - 31 mars 17h-19h La nouvelle guerre au Moyen-Orient : perspectives régionales et internes à la politique iranienne Amphithéâtre Chapsal, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris Présidence :  Aghiad Ghanem, Sciences Po, PSIA Bernard Hourcade, Centre de Recherche sur le Monde iranien (CeRMI) - CNRS : "L'Iran après la guerre : chaos, espoirs de changement ou nouveau despotisme?" Samy Cohen, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "Israël,  une guerre pourquoi faire?" Laurence Louër, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "Les monarchies du Golfe au piège de l’unilatéralisme israélo-américain" Laurent Bonnefoy, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS: "Yémen : d'un conflit l'autre ?" Eberhard Kienle, Sciences Po - CERI / CNRS : "Au-delà du Hizb Allah: le Liban et la Syrie dans la guerre"

'YOU CANNOT ERASE US'

 

NEW SINGLE: EMEL ft. TÄRA 

'YOU CANNOT ERASE US'

It is the story of an Ivorian, a Palestinian, and a Tunisian immigrant. Separated by different borders, they carry the same plea, the plea of the uprooted heart. 

They share the coldness of exclusion, the violence of racism and the weight of ignorance and hatred. In a world fueled by xenophobia and fear of the other, Only music can unite, can resist, A space where voices meet, where dignity is found again. 

Sung in Arabic, Italian, and English, and filmed in the most visceral, human corner of Cairo, You Cannot Erase Us is a cri du cœur, the empathy statement with urgent trap beats we all need to feel again.

Solidarité...

 

With the people of Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, the DR Congo... and all the victims of unjust, brutal wars, here marching in Paris on Sat. 28 March 2026: