More Than Music – Artists Championing Impact Through Creativity

One major aspect of the Goalkeepers Initiative beyond celebrating progress toward the World Targets, is highlighting the tales and trade-makers utilizing this progress forward. We saw this advance to existence at Goalkeepers Lagos 2025, which held on the 4th of June with trade-makers and founders sharing their tales 

What we also saw, at the tournament, is the facility of song to ignite ardour, lope collective social consciousness, and reduction important trade. It’s a pressure that many African artists are harnessing brilliantly.

Past song and creativity, artists possess venerable their platform and recognition to clutch consciousness for social causes, red meat up important movements, and construct affect. From talking out in opposition to police brutality to championing education, gender equality and mental properly being, artists in the continent in overall spend their voices to venture injustice and spark severe conversations. Their impact goes beyond the stage to helping to form public opinion and reduction motion within their communities.

Let’s highlight some African artists the usage of their platforms for advocacy.

M.I Abaga

At Goalkeepers Lagos 2025, MI alongside Waje, delivered one in every of the most heartwarming performances of the tournament – a tune in regards to the continent. The lyrics “Africa plod live to say the story, Nigeria plod live to say the story…” emphasised the need for Africans to abet pushing, dreaming and combating for the betterment of the continent. 

M.I’s “Crowd Mentality” is also one tune that’s in overall cited for its message of social trade and breaking free from societal norms. The lyrics “So spoil free from the crowd mentality…
And then we can launch up to construct a fresh fact” encourages listeners to venture the dwelling quo and take intrepid steps to construct the lengthy escape we all aspire to.

Angélique Kidjo

In 2002, Angélique Kidjo used to be appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, turning into one in every of the few African artists to spend song no longer most productive as a create of cultural preservation but as a instrument for advocacy on a world stage. As an African formed by the political and social experiences of her formative years, she has venerable the UNICEF platform to advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing campaign in opposition to minute one marriage, advocating for ladies’ education and amplifying the tales of communities in overall left at the aid of in coverage conversations.

In 2006, to broaden her work as an envoy, she founded Batonga Basis to red meat up ladies in rural areas and out of college. Past charity, the foundation creates native mentorship networks, trains young ladies folks in entrepreneurship and equips them with tools to navigate an world that in overall ignores their doable.

Adekunle Gold

Like Kidjo, Adekunle Gold drew from his expertise as a sickle cell survivor to red meat up folks with sickle cell anaemia in Nigeria. Through his foundation, The Adekunle Gold Basis, he bridges the gap between folks (ragged and young) living with sickle cell from a low-earnings background and properly being mavens to gain customary healthcare and resources. As a a success artist with 5 albums to his title, Adekunle Gold understands what it manner to spend his platform to advocate for sickle cell in Nigeria, and also inspire, specifically the young ones, that they are champions and shouldn’t be heart-broken from following their dreams, no topic their properly being stipulations. More importantly, as a end result of Adekunle Gold can’t close it on my own, his initiative would possibly per chance even inspire celebrities worship him in Nigeria and Africa to red meat up their communities, specifically low-earnings earners.

The Magic Machine

The significance of artists the usage of their platforms for advocacy is that it attracts the glory of stakeholders from diversified industries and drives sooner affect. To illustrate, in Côte d’Ivoire, a song community known as The Magic Machine has been organising a song competition each year since 2006 to construct social consciousness in direction of a particular social discipline. The competition is named Festival des Musiques Urbaines d’Anoumabo (FEMUA), and closing year, which I attended, the theme used to be “Civics and Avenue Security,” to strive in opposition to one in every of the nation’s main causes of loss of life: road accidents. The 15th version in 2023 used to be themed round meals safety and sustainable agriculture, whereas the 16th version in 2024 desirous about mental properly being.

The competition has grown so tall that it attracts world audiences from France and is in overall attended by over 50,000 spectators. It entails song performances from artists, and this draws in the formative years participation. The Ivorian govt has now collaborated with the organisers of the song competition to extra strategically tackle diversified social factors.

Yemi Alade

As a United Nations Vogue Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador appointed in 2020, Yemi Alade has championed sustainable pattern, climate motion and ladies folks’s empowerment. She usually appears at world forums, speaks on the intersection of art and advocacy, and makes spend of her impact to promote inclusive speak and gender equity all the scheme thru Africa.

Sakordie

Through the Sarkodie Basis, Sarkodie gives college gives, scholarships, and meals to kids in underserved communities. He usually encourages formative years entrepreneurship and civic responsibility, the usage of his song and public statements to promote leadership and accountability among Ghanaian formative years.

Burna Boy

In fact, the artists also advocate of their songs. Burna Boy, as an example, has narrated the struggles of Nigerians and murky folks in loads of songs. In 20 10 20, he narrates the #EndSARS shriek the put Nigerian formative years trooped out to shriek in opposition to violence and injustice from the Nigeria Police forward of they had been met with gun bullets in Lekki Toll Gate. The tune aspects the sounds of bullets and the scrambling voices of Nigerians as they ran for his or her lives. In Monster You Made, off his Grammy-a success album, Twice As Mountainous, he raps about colonialism and its close on Africa this day. In Whiskey, off his 2022 Grammy-nominated album, Fancy-Damini, Burna Boy sings about how the residents of Port Harcourt, the metropolis the put he got right here from, take care of the pollution of the air from oil and gasoline extractions. “Thanks to grease and gasoline, my metropolis so dark. Pollution makes the air flip murky, each man has to cease on guard,” he sings, opening the tune with the divulge of a girl telling how erosion has swept away all his items.

Past this, Burna Boy supports The Attain NG, “a charitable organisation that reaches out to the most inclined in our communities, specifically in events of indecent crisis and sudden pure disasters.”

Patoranking

Patoranking is dedicated to empowering African formative years thru education. In 2018, he launched the Patoranking Scholarship, offering corpulent college scholarships to vivid students from underserved backgrounds all the scheme thru Africa. Through his song and social efforts, he promotes self-belief, community pattern and a message that ability can upward thrust from anywhere.

Despite the systemic screw ups, African artists are exhibiting that creativity would possibly per chance even simply furthermore be a highly efficient pressure for reformation and restore. As gain admission to to quality healthcare and diversified social services remains out of attain for heaps of, African artists remind us that affect is no longer reserved for the govt., and folks with platforms can impact grassroots motion.