Anne Kansiime tops Uganda’s top 100 celebrities list

Her hundreds of video clips on You Tube made her one of the most loved comedians in the country, and that has made Anne Kansiime jump to the top of this year’s Top 100 Celebrities, as released by the New Vision on Friday. It was largely her very strong presence on social media that tipped the numbers into her favour. In previous rankings New Vision used mainly the number of media mentions a person had in 12 months, but this year combined media mentions with Facebook and twitter presence, and came up with a more realistic measure of fame. That meant that athletes, who dominated last year’s rankings, were relegated to mid table as they are yet to become very active on social media, although they generally led on media mentions. Eight of the top 10 celebrities were musicians, with Kansiime, a comedian, and Mariam Ndagire the veteran actress the only two that were not. A big surprise was Angella Katatumba, who came in at number 2, again showing the strength of social media presence. Her Facebook page has over 300,000 likes and counting, while Bobi Wine only has 30,000 likes. There were 5 women in the top 10, including rapper Keko who, while not having many media mentions and not many Facebook likes, nevertheless had the most Twitter followers among the top 100 with almost 40,000. Flavia Tumusiime was the highest rated radio presenter at number 13, while gossip queen Mary Luswata was the highest ranked TV presenter at 18. Frank and Sheila Gashumba made a father-child presence, while Zari Hussein beat out fellow socialite Judith Heard by 2 places (29 to 30). Olympic and World Marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich was the highest ranked athlete at 35, with just 10,000 Facebook likes and only 100 followers on Twitter. Now New York-based Africa’s Next Top Model winner Aamoti topped the fashion fraternity, coming in at 43, while fashion designers Sylvia Owori (45) and Brenda Maraka (71) also featured.

Leisure

Anne Kansiime tops Uganda’s top 100 celebrities list