Afrique Victime

The band recorded it a track at a time while touring Ilana, in studios, apartments, hotel rooms and backstage rooms. Coltun said Moctar is uneasy in studios and that his job as producer was to make him comfortable, and Moctar said the piecemeal method was easy for him. Seth Manchester mixed it at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and Robert Beatty made the artwork. The label's notes describe songs about love, religion, women's rights, inequality and colonial exploitation in West Africa, with Ya Habibti and Layla paying tribute to the Nigerien musician Abdallah Ag Oumbadagou.

It scored 86 on Metacritic, with 8.4 from Pitchfork and four stars from AllMusic, The Guardian and Rolling Stone, and The Guardian placed it tenth among the albums of 2021. It reached two on the UK Independent Album Breakers chart. A digital deluxe edition in February 2022 added demos and live versions, plus Nakanegh Dich, which Coltun said was Moctar's first time using a wah pedal.