The only thing to match Dobet Gnahoré’s infectious energy on her debut full-length UK tour was the enthusiasm of two African dancers who’ve joined her for a series of collaborative shows.

Things started slowly as the Ivory Coast singer’s rich and soulful voice soared mournfully over a lament she played on the thumb piano.

Soon her band, including her husband and guitarist Colin Laroche de Féline, filled out the sound to create what she calls pan-African music.

There was western style slap-bass and jazz guitar solos fused with West African melodies, dialects and percussion.

But when the duo of Ghanaian Ernest Kwame Obeng and Senegal-born Landing Maneh hit the stage things intensified. Dobet then showed the audience the moves she learned as a young girl raised in the renowned Ivory Coast artistic colony founded by her father, Boni Gnahoré.

Dobet has already penned four albums and it would be easy to think she has left it late coming to Britain.

Yet her music - songs of love and pleas for unity and development in Africa (especially poignant in light of the Ebola crisis and her tour’s coinciding with Black History Month) – crossed over easily.

Even without a co-production with Brighton club night African Night Fever, she might find herself back on British shores quicker than she imagines.