AURA (United Artists for African Rap)

AURA (Artistes Unis pour le Rap Africain / United Artists for African Rap) is a collective of 17 hip hop artists (plus one griot) coming from ten different countries in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo) and who are committed to use their voices and music for Africa’s development. With the support of the Non Governmental Organization PLAN International, they are engaged in a public awareness campaign relating to Children’s rights and youth problems. With respect, they realized in 2006 the first ever hip hop musical comedy show “The extraordinary Stories of Poto-Poto Children”.

There are currently 17 members of AURA, originating from 10 different West African countries:

The artists’ underlying philosophy is that of Africanist optimism; they believe that Africa has the ability to overcome all her challenges and they are strongly focused on encouraging youth engagement to this end. They contend that the youth represent the leaders of tomorrow and it is only by engaging Africa’s currently largely marginalised youth population that the continent has a chance of developing.

AURA is currently engaged in a campaign designed to raise awareness about children’s rights and the problems that children are facing on a daily basis. The campaign is called “Poto-Poto”; “Poto-Poto” translates as ‘mud’ and is also the colloquial name for the big African market. It represents the children's home; many of whom are forced to wander the streets, sleeping in the market and eating bits of food that they find there. The Poto-Poto campaign is centred on the production of a music album: “The extraordinary stories of the Poto-Poto children” (“Les histoires extraordinaires des enfants de Poto-Poto”). In this album, each rap artist plays the role of a particular child, be it child soldier, child prostitute, victim of a forced marriage, drug dealer etc. In the songs, the children meet to exchange their stories, to condemn or condone their friends’ ways of life and to ask questions about how such situations came about. The use of rap in this way allows often sensitive topics to be broached in a way that young people are able to understand and relate to.

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