Stand-up comedians from Uganda

A Ugandan comic's largest audience is often in another country. Anne Kansiime, who was born in Mparo, made her weekly sketch show for Citizen TV, a station in Kenya, and played it out to Blantyre, Gaborone, Kigali, Lagos, Lusaka and Harare before London and Kuala Lumpur. Arthur Simeon left Kampala for a university in Peterborough, Ontario, started stand-up there and has worked out of Toronto since. Anisa Nandaula was born in Kampala and does her comedy in Queensland, having come to it from slam poetry. Imran Yusuf grew up in London because his family were among the Asians expelled from Uganda in 1972, so the country reaches his act as inheritance rather than as an address.

At home the circuit has a spine. Comedy Store Uganda, which Alex Muhangi started in May 2016 at Diner's Lounge in Bukoto and later moved to the UMA halls at Lugogo, runs live for about six hours and goes out cut to half an hour on NTV Uganda. It works in English and Luganda together, which is how most stand-up here is actually spoken, and it doubles as the room where new names get seen. Akite Agnes runs an all-female bill, Arise Woman! Comedy Jam, staged on International Women's Day and giving the takings to a charity each time.

Patrick Idringi, who performs as Salvado, read telecommunications engineering at Makerere University and turned to comedy after finishing first runner up in a televised competition in 2009, then built the Africa Laughs shows and his own Lord of the Ribs nights in London. Storytelling and character comedy carry more of the weight here than a punchline-first delivery, and Luganda carries much of that, which is also why the version of an act that travels tends to be the thinner one.