African managed to hold magical staff (7)
I believe the answer is:
rwandan
'african' is the definition.
(Rwanda is an African country)
'managed to hold magical staff' is the wordplay.
'managed' becomes 'ran' (both can mean organised or was in charge of).
'to hold' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'magical staff' becomes 'wand' (I've seen this before).
'ran' placed around 'wand' is 'RWANDAN'.
(Other definitions for rwandan that I've seen before include "From a central African country" , "African native" , "Eg, a native of Kigali" , "Kigali native, perhaps" , "African chap" .)