Nijmegen whatever it was, we want some more!

When Africa Night Tilburg started long ago (13.5 years to be precise), we had a feeling it was going to become something special. We were right and 13.5 years later, Africa Night Tilburg has grown to be the biggest of its kind in the whole of the Benelux. ANT as we like to call it, attracts an average monthly crowd of about 300 African music lovers.

For 12 years, we resisted the pressure to start Africa Night in other cities in The Netherlands. But starting in 2010, we decided to succumb to the enormous pressure and hit the road. Since March 2010 we’ve been to Rotterdam, Maastricht, Almere and now Nijmegen. In none of those first 3 places did we have that special feeling we had in Tilburg all those years ago.


That was until Saturday 5 November 2011. That was the day the inaugural Africa Night Nijmegen (ANN) took place. What a reception ANN got! We have to say we were a little apprehensive of the kind of reception Africa Night was going to get in Nijmegen. This was borne out of the fact that until now, Africa Night has been met with (in)different levels of enthusiasm since we ventured out of Tilburg. We were going to be happy with any figure of around 80 people. And this did not even take into consideration the fact that there was going to be a live show from a popular Guinean singer at a rival location. It was good we did not know this beforehand otherwise we would have been even more pessimistic of our chances. But we needed not worry at all. Nijmegen opened its arms wide open to embrace us and the final figure was close to 150 people!

The pictures and the videos tell the story better than we could ever tell with words. The feeling we had when we left Nijmegen early on Sunday morning was the same feeling we had in May 1998 in Tilburg. Nijmegen feels good. We think this might be the beginning of a second love affair. We are sure ANT will not mind ANN giving us some more love. Thank you Nijmegen. Thank you to all who came. Most importantly, a big thanks to those (you know yourselves) who not only inspired our coming to Nijmegen, but also did their best to spread the word! Let’s all do it all over again on Saturday 3rd of December 2011. Same place. Same time! Don’t forget to join us in between in Tilburg on Saturday 19th of November 2011 for the mother of all Africa Nights!