New French friend, top class bandleader, back in old South West Africa (7)
I believe the answer is:
namibia
'south west africa' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'new french friend top class bandleader back in' is the wordplay.
'new' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation eg NT for New Testament).
'french friend' becomes 'ami' (I've seen this before).
'top class' becomes 'a' (top grade).
'bandleader back' becomes 'ib' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'ami'+'a'='amia'
'amia' placed around 'ib' is 'amibia'.
'n'+'amibia'='NAMIBIA'
'old' acts as a link.
This may not be right. It may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for namibia that I've seen before include "Southern African country" , "Southwest African country" , "African country, capital Windhoek" , "part of Africa" , "foreign country" .)