In partnership with Global Citizen, Move Afrika will be “a five-year effort that aims to promote health and equity, defend our planet, and create jobs and economic opportunity.”
Hugh Evans, co-founder and CEO of Global Citizen recently spoke with Variety about the project and why it was necessary.
“As we have expanded our footprint across the continent, what’s always occurred to us is just how unbelievable it is that there isn’t a mature touring circuit across the continent that connects north, south, east, and west Africa,” he said. “So that’s why we’ve created Move Afrika, to achieve that goal over the coming five years.”
According to Global Citizen’s website for Move Afrika, the goal is to curate “an annual series of world-class live events [that will] drive transformative investments in community-provided health services within local communities, engage local vendors, agencies, artists and crews, and provide opportunities for on-the-job skill development and training.”
Over the next five years pgLang will act as co-curator of the Move Afrika festival with Kung-Fu Kenny set to kick things off with a show in Rwanda next month. Veering away from their usual aesthetic of live-streaming, Lamar’s show won’t be streamed worldwide according to Evans. “Our focus from a broadcast point of view actually is to have the live stream be local. We want people across East Africa to be able to stream this and watch it on television live.”
The local livestream aspect is just a small step in the planned direction of the initiative that also aims to make the continent an active partner and have a say in what goes.
“They’re going to be involved from a musical curation point of view, helping to determine which artists are involved following in Kendrick’s footsteps,” said Evans. “But they’re also going to be involved creatively as well, thinking through the creative rollout of the campaigns over the years, the look and feel, and the global broadcast. They really have become partners in this endeavor.”
Move Afrika is set to kick on with a concert that Kendrick Lamar will headline on Dec. 6 at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda.
