Angélique Kidjo has made history. On August 18, 2026, the Beninese-French singer became the first African musician and first Black African to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honored at a ceremony on Hollywood Boulevard that drew film stars, music industry heavyweights, and members of her home country’s government. Hollywood Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez celebrated Kidjo as an artist whose influence has reached audiences across generations and continents, while Kidjo herself framed the honor as a celebration of Africa’s place in global music rather than a personal milestone alone. The ceremony brought out actor and fellow Beninese icon Djimon Hounsou, Academy Award-nominated actor Willem Dafoe, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., Nigerian singer Adekunle Gold, and Benin’s Minister of Culture, all gathered to watch Kidjo receive the Walk of Fame’s 2,854th star in the Recording category. The moment caps a four-decade career built on fusing the West African sounds of her Beninese childhood with funk, jazz, R&B, and gospel, and follows the release of her nineteenth studio album, HOPE!!, earlier this year.

Among those swept up in the celebration was acclaimed novelist Alain Mabanckou, who shared his own tribute to Kidjo on Instagram. Writing in French, Mabanckou described the day’s significance: “We are celebrating, on this 18th of August, 2026 in Los Angeles, Angélique Kidjo’s historic star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the presence of her brother, the Minister of Culture of Benin, and Beninese-born actor Djimon Hounsou,” he wrote, tagging Djimon Hounsou, Angélique Kidjo, and Claudy Siar in the post.

It’s a full-circle moment for African arts and letters — a novelist whose work has carried Congolese and Francophone African storytelling to the world, standing alongside a musician who has done the same for the sounds of Benin, both marking a night that belongs to the continent as much as to Kidjo herself.

See the pictures below — courtesy of Alain Mabanckou’s Instagram.