African from a new country almost stifling progress (7)
I believe the answer is:
angolan
'african' is the definition.
(Angolan is an example)
'a new country almost stifling progress' is the wordplay.
'a new' becomes 'an' (I've seen this in other clues**).
'country' becomes 'land' ('land' can be a synonym of 'country').
'almost' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'stifling' indicates putting letters inside.
'progress' becomes 'go' (I've seen this in other clues).
'land' with its last letter removed is 'lan'.
'an'+'lan'='anlan'
'anlan' placed around 'go' is 'ANGOLAN'.
'from' is the link.
(Other definitions for angolan that I've seen before include "from Africa" , "Coming from a southwest African country" , "One from Luanda" , "Eg, native of Luanda" .)