Once dominant … Burna Boy plays the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival in 2024. Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian View image in fullscreen Once dominant … Burna Boy plays the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival in 2024. Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian Pop and rock ‘Nobody knows what works. There’s a lot of panic’: can African pop get back to global success? Tracks by Rema, Burna Boy and more were streaming in the billions, but hits are drying up. Stars and analysts across the African music industry fret about how to change course Chibuzo Emmanuel Wed 22 Apr 2026 10.10 BST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google I n 2016, Afrobeats – the catchall term for a range of contemporary dance music emerging from west Africa – began to seep into global pop culture, propelled by intercontinental collaborations such as Wizkid and Drake’s Come Closer . Olabode Otolorin, then a university student, would dispatch optimistic forecasts on the internet about the genre’s future. Nearly a decade on and now a campaign associate at Mavin Records, one of Africa’s leading labels, Otolorin has a more downbeat outlook on Afrobeats. “It is currently in a perilous state in terms of our exports,” he says. Otolorin is not alone in this sentiment. Addressing the 200 or so fans gathered at a spruced-up warehouse in Lagos for a recent listening party for his new album, Clarity of Mind, Afrobeats stalwart Omah Lay made a startling but accurate observation. “Afrobeats is declining overseas – that’s a fact. The sound from 2020 to 2024 isn’t what it is today. I’ve been watching, learning and studying my idols, looking for a way to bring that energy back,” he said pensively. View image in fullscreen ‘Looking for a way to bring that energy back’ … Omah Lay, pictured in January. Photograph: Miguel McSongwe/BFA.com/Shutterstock “Younger artists are still optimistic, believing they can go global,” says Melody Ifeanyi Adigo, a broadcaster who has interviewed major African stars such as Davido and Adekunle Gold. “But when I speak to more established artists, I mostly get a sense that they’re just trying to survive these times.” If 2016 marked Afrobeats’ entry into the global pop consciousness, it broke through in 2021. As the world stirred from the pandemic lull, the genre surged worldwide as listeners latched on to its blend of syncopated drums and bright melodies, inviting comparisons to reggae at its peak. Songs such as Ckay’s Love Nwantiti and Wizkid’s Essence soundtracked millions of TikTok videos and tore through global charts including the US Hot 100 and the UK Top 40. The following year, Burna Boy’s Last Last , Oxlade’s Ku Lo Sa and Fireboy DML’s Peru , among others, were similarly dominant. In 2023, the Selena Gomez remix of Calm Down by Nigerian vocalist Rema became the biggest success of all, peaking at No 3 in the US and earning billions of streams. The genre looked invincible. “Afrobeats has been one of our major exports, not just in terms of money but in terms of shedding more light on our culture and on the way we live,” says Joeboy, one of Nigeria’s biggest artists. “In the past, western media placed different perceptions on us but Afrobeats’ global rise has made the world interested in not just our music but our culture, our fashion, our swag.” In West Africa today, traditional media – television, radio, and print – still drives popularity in rural areas, while in cities such as Lagos and Accra, fans now brandish streaming figures and international sales certifications in social media stan wars. But the boasts are diminishing: US chart entries for African artists dried up after Calm Down, and leading acts including Wizkid have cancelled global tours, fuelling a sense of unease throughout the scene. Even high-profile international collaborations have failed to work their usual magic: Burna Boy’s Change Your Mind , featuring US country singer Shaboozey, had little impact in his native Nigeria, to say nothing of its tepid global reception. Other