Baaba Maal usually arrives on stage dressed in traditional robes. He throws off the outer cloak, then his tunic, to dance bare-chested. He may take a talking drum and squeeze it under his arm, rapping out an urgent tattoo or embark on a series of increasingly improbable leaps.

The Baaba Maal who breezes forgivably late into the Kensington townhouse headquarters of Palm Pictures, his long-time record label, quibbling with Suzette Newman, Palm’s London chief, over whether Africans or Jamaicans are more unpunctual, is very different. He is wearing a safari suit in minute checks and toying with an iPhone. For the first time in nearly a decade he is releasing a new album, Television. But he now channels his charisma as much into activism as into music.

In his mid-50s, the Senegalese singer is a bankable superstar. In some ways, his career has been an improbable one. His father was a fisherman, which in the stratified society of west Africa should have prevented his son becoming a musician. “The hereditary tradition is very heavy. But when I went to school I had freedom from the caste system. I say, ‘I’m not a griot but I am an artist.’ That’s how someone like Salif Keita or Ismaël Lô [two other West African musicians from non-musical backgrounds] has the temerity to sing.”

He formed a lifelong friendship with the blind griot Mansour Seck, who still sings with him. He and Seck joined one of the companies set up in Senegal after independence that fused folk theatre, energetic choreography and traditional music as a vehicle of cultural nationalism. Then the pair decamped to Paris (Maal wanted to see how Manu Dibango, a hero of his, made a living as a musician). While there they recorded a cassette. “We were already a bit famous in Senegal and we wanted people to know we were still around.”

A thousand copies of the cassette were made and one found its way to Rogue Records, which issued it in the west. A concert for the BBC followed and Maal’s career took off – eccentrically, at times, but solidly. He made albums with western dance producers, taking his sound many miles from the acoustic guitar blues of that first cassette. He built a high profile in Africa as a public intellectual, whether speaking for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Aids and HIV, campaigning against female genital mutilation, playing for Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square or for Wangari Maathai at the Nobel Prize ceremony.

His most recent album, 2001’s Mi Yeewnii, was a return to his acoustic roots. Since then, he has released no new material and, internationally, just one CD, a stopgap live set. He has set up a festival, Les Blues du Fleuve, that hops each year between the countries that border the Senegal river. “It’s not just about music. Music makes people come but we go to villages and talk to leaders about the importance of education. We have fishing demonstrations. We teach people how to make a life around the river.”

He is also a mainstay of Africa Express, the peripatetic free-wheeling jam sessions that bring together African and western musicians. “African music doesn’t have the place in the industry that it should have. Africa Express helps both sides – it’s an equal exchange.”

Along the way, he has been deliberating at length over his new album. “I took the time to think about how to follow the last one. I wanted something really, really different. I had ideas about what I wanted to say, based on my work with UNDP, and then I looked for what kind of music would be really appropriate to catch the attention of people.”

He found a sympathetic ear in the Irish producer Barry Reynolds, who had worked with him a decade before on Nomad Soul, as well as with artists ranging from Marianne Faithfull to Grace Jones. He suggested Maal should team up with the Brazilian Girls, a trendy New York combo (none of whom is Brazilian and only one female).

“We played and talked like people in a living room, breaking off from music to give opinions about the world and what’s going on. That talking fed the writing of the songs. The music has to be catchy but it’s a call not to dance but to listen and to meditate.” Sabina Sciubba and Didi Gutman, along with Maal and Reynolds, co-wrote the bulk of the songs on Television, working an experimental electronic sheen into its acoustic guitars and crowds of African drums.

The album as a whole is a panoramic tour of Maal’s interests. “Miracle” condemns poor political leadership in Africa while “A Song For Women” reflects a continuing interest in female empowerment. “Mansour Seck and I used to sing a song that said, ‘A good woman is a woman who keeps her house and raises her children.’ Those are good things to do but, at the same time, we need to see women getting more involved in culture and society. We can’t achieve the Millennium Goals without women. When women get together and agree to do something, they do it. Men don’t exactly do that in Africa.”

“International” is built on a recited list of world cities, from Paris and Tokyo to Dakar. “I’m saying that Africans have to start with African solutions on the continent. We have to stop waiting for things to come from the outside. We have to stop corruption. We have to stop conflicts. That’s for us to do.”

The title track expresses Maal’s unease about the spread of television throughout Africa. But he also sees benefits, not least for his own campaigns. He made a programme for Senegalese TV, lobbying against smoking. “In small villages, kids who finish work in the fields or fishing don’t have much to do. The traditions have all gone, but nothing modern has come to replace them yet. They’re stuck in the middle, and all they have to do is smoke. I just said, ‘I’m not doing it any more.’ And my fans copy me, and find that it’s very good for them.”

A couple of years ago he made a flying visit to the South African Big Brother house, talking about HIV/Aids and education. Afterwards, he lay on his hotel bed in Johannesburg, watching the tickertape of text messages from viewers across the continent, from Lagos to Cape Town. “I was on the show for 10 minutes,” he recalls with evident satisfaction, “and there were all these millions of people watching, texting in to say Baaba Maal was right.”

‘Television’ is released on Palm Pictures on June 1. Details of Baaba Maal’s UK concerts and festival appearances at www.baabamaal.tv