Ah, YouTube! My personal happy place on the internet. The last few years have seen Uganda’s YouTube community grow beyond the realm of music videos and celebrity channels, with ordinary Ugandans putting in time and money to produce so much entertaining, resourceful and inspirational content captured on video.

These creative individuals have either carved out a niche for themselves in a specific area or two, or exhibited versatility and a jack-of-all-trades mentality with the content they have managed to put out for our consumption. In this article, I’ll be telling you more about a few of these men and women and why you should check out their YouTube channels if you haven’t already.

Joy Akatukunda started out her vlogging journey by posting videos of herself and a few other friends pulling off some rather cool choreographed dance moves to songs by Cardi B, Davido, Cindy, Pallaso, Sauti Sol among others. Since then (owing to the pandemic, I’m assuming), she’s transitioned into producing vlogs centered around skincare, makeup, home workouts, and healthy eating. She’s also made a few unboxing videos, talked about social media influencers, done a few restaurant reviews, a Q&A session and so much more. Remember the jack-of-all-trades mentality? She’s a jill-of-all-trades. Get it? Jill? No? Okay, moving on.

Danze Deejahn: A quick look through this gentleman’s content and you’ll quickly notice how much he loves all things digital. Topics covered range from social media use, online businesses, content creation, gameplay clips and tech reviews. He’s also chronicled his experience attending a “scientific wedding”, learned how to ride a motorcycle, and given viewers a virtual tour of the Entebbe Expressway. So as much as Danze lives and breathes tech, he’s still able to produce some out-of-the-box content for his subscribers. Speaking of out-of-the-box…

Raymond Kahuma: I could sit here and do a full feature piece on Raymond, but we’ve already done that. But hey, this is a man who launched food into outer space, then ate it afterwards. Now that’s a first (in Uganda, at least)! Raymond has two channels; one for vlogs where he races paper boats down the Nile and spends 24 hours in the middle of nowhere on Lake Victoria, and another for his Raydioactive Podcast where he talks about random and hilarious stuff with his guests. I mean, a podcast is cool but eating a space sausage? That’s out of this world!

Methia Nabawanda: Okay, back to earth now. Methia’s thing is interviews. Simple sit-down conversations with guests ranging from Ykee Benda and Lynda Ddane to presidential candidate Katumba John. Today she’ll be discussing the Black Lives Matter movement with AIGP Asan Kasingye, next day she’ll engage A-Pass in a game of FIFA while having a fun talk about the music industry in Uganda. So if you’re into one-on-one interviews, you may want to check out Methia’s channel.

Melissa Mulungi: Onto the “basummer” now. And we start with Melissa Mulungi, who can be described as a travel vlogger. As seen on her “Melbs” channel, she’s been all around the world; London, Cairo, Germany, Barcelona, and most impressive of all, Masaka. She’s also quite the fashion enthusiast and has got some great music playlists too. Speaking of music, Melissa doubles as a recording artiste, and her single “Empire of Love” can be found on her self-titled channel. Now that’s range.

Jan Mukiibi. Another Ugandan based in the UK. I’m sure you have seen her pictures somewhere on Instagram or stumbled upon her outstanding beauty and poise somewhere across the streets of internet.  But that’s beside the point today. Jan who is commonly known by her title; Miss Uganda UK 2017-2018 has taken YouTube by its horns. She owns 2 channels; one that showcases her day-to-day life as a Med student, travel content, hilarious family features and all that and another on which she tells tales and their impact/lessons a Muganda girl like her can draw from. Follow her channels is what you need to do.

Arif Ssempala also known as Mr. Ugandan Schnack has what I call C-O-N-T-E-N-T!! Arif is a Ugandan model who lives in the UK. His creative game is out of this world and It’s no wonder that he has worked on campaigns with major brands, they needed some of that creativity. Arif with his close Ugandan friends in the UK formed a channel called Olugambo Squad that has all the juice, interesting topics of discussion and banter et al. This group comprises of Joannita, Aisha,Charvia (Who also own individual Youtube channels ; Monochrome Ego, Everything Aish, Charvia X respectively), Najib Teo. Y’all need to find this group.

Apollo Muwonge: We conclude with London-based vlogger Apollo Muwonge. He has dedicated his channel, “Apollo M”, to matters of the heart. He gives his opinion on whether nice guys actually finish last, lets you know how to tell if a man is falling in love and why he thinks titles complicate things between a woman and a man. You can also gain some financial knowledge, learn how to trust people more and watch as he tries to find a nice apartment for himself. Oh, and he records most of his videos in his car. It’s not particularly useful information, I just…thought…you should know.

Anyway, check these ladies and gentlemen out and don’t forget to like the videos, share them and subscribe to their channels. Admit it, you knew that was coming all you will need for this is MTN Pulse Data bundle that you can get by dialing *157#.