Originally Posted by Wikipedia

African popular music, like African traditional music, is vast and varied. Most contemporary genres of African popular music build on cross-pollination with western popular music. Many genres of popular music like blues, jazz, salsa zouk, and rumba derive to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by African slaves. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, rhythm and blues. Likewise, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music.[1]

Originally Posted by RYM

The term African Popular Music doesn't refer to any particular genre or sound, it's a commonly used generic term to describe all forms of modern music from Africa. Most of these genres incorporate western influences like Rock, Rhythm & Blues and Jazz into the basic sounds of African Folk Music.

Note: Although African Popular Music is a geographical meta-genre for a wide range of diverse Popular Music genres on the African continent, this meta-genre does not encompass Arabic Popular Music genres found in North Africa.