Anne Kansiime: A challenge to Bongo Comedians?

The comedy industry in Tanzania and East Africa in general gains popularity due to rapid growth of ICT technology. The region has also been experiencing an increased number of talented comedians. Anne Kansiime is among the funniest and popular comedian in the region, she uses internet to make herself famous.

The use of Internet has made Anna Tunsiime recognized not only in the region but also in the continent. She invests heavily on Social Networking sites like Facebook, tweeter and other social networking sites.This has made her receive international awards like BEFFTA 2003 (Best Winner), Lagos International Festival 2003 (Best Actress winner winner) and Social Media Awards (Female Celebrity) Winner and African Social Awards Malaysia (ASAM) in 2013.

Anne Kansiime poses a challenge over other East Africa comedians, especially the Tanzanian Comedians like Masanja ‘Mkandamizaji”, Joti, Mzee Majuto and others. Her comedian style is focused on aspects of her personal life in addition to her unique amusing strategies and techniques that win majority of people within East Africa and beyond. Anna said, "I like talking about things that are going on in life, because that's always going to be different and original”.

Anne Kansiime was born on April 13, 1987 in Kabale Uganda. She is a comedian and the writer and a graduate from the University of Makerere in Uganda. Anna Tunsiime is also  married. Even amongst various acting commitments, Kansiime has continued performing and touring as standup comedian in Uganda and the rest of Africa.

Anne Kansiime

The First and Second Day of the Training

The first day of the training was really awesome! We were exposed to a number of activities; first of all, each of us explained personal expectations from the training. Thereafter, the trainer who is also the journalist and programme coordinator from the Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (Vikes), Mr, Peik Johansson facilitated the discussion on issues like how Internet has changed societies. We also learnt the extent to which the Websites have drastically changed the world. To mention few, these are the e-bay, Wikipedia, you tube, blogger and the amazon.com.

Also, we went through the world’s statistics for internet users and uses of Internet from technical view point. We further discussed about journalism in the age of Internet. Eventually the trainer, Mr. Peik equipped us with technical skills on how to open blogs and encouraged us to start posting something on the particular blogs.

Lastly, we were assigned to search from Google the Rupert Murdoch’s speech to American society of Newspaper Editors on April 13, 2005 which would lead the discussions in the following days.

On the second day of the training, we practically worked on our blogs; we also learnt how internet could be used as a tool in everyday journalism. We were also introduced to journalistic research techniques, for instance, how to search for facts, sources and background information from the search engines like Google. The trainer also provided us with some simple tips to be taken into account when conducting research. These include thinking first before going to the web and choosing the right search words.

Generally, I liked almost everything in the training, despite of the time constraints.

To be continued…