Uganda’s young creatives: A case for more skills for a digital age.
“Social media really, really helps to connect. There are so many places I’ve gone to and they already know me,” Kisakye says.
Kisakye is a 30-year-old budding musician in Kampala. She juggles a full-time office job with performing at restaurants and bars on the weekends and weekday evenings. She posts videos of her singing on Instagram and YouTube to promote her talent and get gigs. Kisakye’s positive experience of social media’s impact on gaining visibility and earning an income with creative work are echoed by many youths today.
As Kisakye’s experience highlights, digitalization is transforming the culture and creative industries. Digital platforms, like Instagram, offer young artists new ways to produce their work and reach a broader range of audiences and consumers within and beyond Uganda.
A shift to online markets gives creatives greater independence from traditional intermediaries and middlemen (such as publishers or galleries), making the sector a more viable income source for talented youth. Alice, a young creative who trained as a lawyer but today runs a digital content company, shared how she started by publishing blogs online:
“I started with a blog on WordPress. Just writing simply for the sake of writing because I enjoyed it. Later, I started to really think about what I could do with the space and community I had created not just to provide information and entertainment but also be able to make a living for myself.”
As digitalization presents new avenues for income generation, young creatives like Kisaskye and Alice have more agency and confidence to chart new paths. Kisakye plans to leave her office job in the future and says social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube will be a central part of her career as a musician.
But before she quits her job, Kisakye says she needs skills that will support her music career. She wants to learn how to sing better, how to produce music, and how to use digital platforms to reach even bigger audiences. She needs more knowledge about copyright issues and protections. Kisakye is already trying to learn new skills online:
“I went to YouTube before I did a show and there was this lady telling us how to sing, how to create more space for your vocals. I did it and realized that I had more space to really let my voice move. And, then I realized, ‘oh my gosh, there’s so much I could learn.’”
Alice, who has considerable experience as a content creator, wants to learn better financial management practices:
“I think the management of finances is definitely a hard part because now you are working for yourself and you need to know how to move your money and grow it. Building long-term strategies, specifically financially, is a tool we could all use.”
Together, the skills Alice and Kisakye refer to are what Caribou Digital refers to as skills for a digital age, a diverse set of skills that go beyond digital skills (using digital platforms, coding, or e-commerce selling) and include others like financial management, business management, project management, and communication skills. These are some of the technical, digital, and soft skills needed to thrive on digital platforms.
Kisakye, Alice, and 35 other Ugandan creatives shared their experiences as part of Caribou Digital’s research on how young people in the culture and creative industries are navigating and adapting to digitalization-driven changes, with a focus on skills, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. They are poets, illustrators, cartoonists, performance artists, writers, podcasters, visual artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, and gamers, all between ages 18 and 35 and based in Kampala.
Caribou Digital conducted this research in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation under their Young Africa Works initiative, which aims to enable 30 million young Africans, 70% of whom will be women, to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030. The Foundation views the creative industry in Africa as one of the pathways to employment for young people, particularly if they have the right skills.
The research includes four outputs:
- Overall Executive summary: Skilling Uganda’s young creatives for a digital age: A way forward
- Findings: Skills for a digital age for Uganda’s young creatives
- Skilling Uganda’s young creatives for a digital age: Recommendations
- Uganda’s culture and creative industries in a digital age: A landscape review
