What are your roots?
I was born in Masaka in 1988. I went to Christian schools, for primary, secondary plus college and studied ICT at university. I most recently continued my education with a leadership and communication professional certification at Harvard.
I believe my purpose in life is to serve, lead and work as a team. As a footballer earlier in life and later as an entrepreneur – from rearing rabbits to selling sweets – I always want to kickstart and grow initiatives and create equal opportunities for everyone. Equality for me means everyone has a chance to achieve their goals. This gives me satisfaction.
Where did you get the passion for music using digital platforms?
First, I have a history with music since primary school where I participated in singing inspired by Pearl of Africa children’s choir at Molly and Paul schools. I always loved music. Secondly, I got involved in digitalization early. My older brother founded HiPipo. He had a computer and I loved being in his hostel to use it. By 2004, I could do some coding.
I had some musician friends and wanted to use my knowledge to help them use technology. With confidence in the transformative capacity of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), we started to expand the reach of the content creators in music to customers and fans across continents that are typically excluded by the local content distribution networks.
We knew musicians had audiences in the diaspora like Europe who wanted their music, but at that time artists hustled to send the music on CDs; so, we thought we could create an avenue for them to reach these audiences online.
How did you initiate the concept of online charts and how did it change the music industry?
We were excited about billboard charts and People Awards. We wanted to find ways of aggregating our data. So, we created an algorithm – together with John Mark Ssebunnya, Beneth Musime, Ismail Kaddu, Vincent Lubega, George Kasakya and Augustine Kisitu – integrating data from our own platform plus YouTube and Facebook to measure which songs were being played most. That’s how the HiPipo charts came about.
The impact created a more ideal positive competition, using statistics rather than fighting over character and unproveable opinions. Between 2008 and 2013, all the songs that made it to our charts would get more airplay – for example, Sheebah, Bebe Cool, Bobi Wine, Eddy Kenzo (Stamina’s viral made him a breakthrough hit leveraging internet). Now they would make sure HiPipo has their video first to get up to the chart, then TV and radio don’t charge them much to play what they see is popular online.
Tell us about the advent of HiPipo Music Awards
In 2011, we started with monthly HiPipo Celebrity Nites to award the best statistics for the act and artist of the month. In May 2012, we hosted the first-ever virtual awards event in East Africa called HiPipo Charts festival to celebrate a whole year of online music excellency powered by HiPipo Charts. It grew from there.
We had the first in-person event in 2013. By then, we were encouraging online voting. As time went on, we created a social media category and a best fans group awards, which also pushed fans more online to vote (we always gave the winners a cow and a few goats for the runner-up). We also created a category for best school act, which got schools to create online content; this led into a schools’ digital and financial inclusion challenge.
The HiPipo Music Awards then led us to start the Include Everyone program, under which the Digital Impact Awards Africa started running in 2013. This helped birth programmes focused more on low-income digital users, special interest groups such as women, organisations and small formal and informal businesses, and we helped them to create online offices – AKA websites plus social media channels – offering physical and online workstations.
The humble beginnings of HiPipo merging music and ICT eventually got us into more sector research too, and we’ve since done studies and released reports – like in 2014: Maximizing Value of Web, Mobile and Social Media Investment, in which among other deliverables we rated the top 1000 taxpayers online presence – and this pushed Ugandan businesses to work on their websites and social media, which created a multitude of job opportunities.
You see how one thing led to another? From the ripple effects of music charts to events to community work to growing the digital media industry in East Africa and beyond. It’s been exciting and satisfying to be part of this modernizing shift.
Online charts and music awards are usually contested/criticized by people who don’t make the list/shortlist: how have you managed to keep everyone happy over the years?
I am sure we have not kept many people happy. Honestly, some are very unhappy with us. As leaders and one of the pioneers of digital innovation evolution in the continent, we take responsibility to make sure we do the right thing, which is best for the industry, economy and continent.
Whenever we have a chance to explain to aggrieved parties, we sit down and talk about their grievances. We try to explain our statistics and share snippets of the algorithm we use to run every process of the awards. We have made up with many people and not others. We do our best to explain the numbers, and hopefully that process also helps to educate our fellow citizens about ICT.
What trick have you used to keep the legitimacy of HiPipo Music Awards for over 10 years while other awards just come and go?
A couple of things that someone might call a trick: one, we have a longstanding mission and vision. We planned to make sure it’s sustainable and make sure it contributes to modernizing not only music but also public service, corporate, film, TV, drama among other industries.
Two, legitimacy; some may not agree, but the truth is we’ve kept integrity by making sure we protect the systems we have created and over time we distanced ourselves from individuals that might create more conflict. We endeavor to be accountable and transparent.
Three, our ICT-enabled algorithms offer a great deal of numbers to listen to, other than just our opinions. Four, we are thankful to our main sponsor, God. Often sponsors dropped out, but we kept running. Regardless, we keep learning from every experience.
In 2020 you organized Virtual Music Awards, how was the experience?
Of course it was not the first time for us, but by numbers it worked out well! COVID-19 was beneficial for accelerating digital innovation initiatives, even though it was bad for many people’s health and livelihoods. Our virtual awards show in 2020 was the most attended, with more than 10,000 watching live online.
This event helped bring back a bit of hope to musicians who were losing out. We were also generously supported by the Gates Foundation through its Level One Project initiative to convene and boost FinTechs and Digital Financial Service providers across the continent at the time when COVID was so bad for every economy, all while disseminating necessary learning experiences for everyone we could so that they can turn into goodwill ambassadors for the shared goals on digital innovation of HiPipo and our partners.
How would you rate Ugandan music over the past 15 years?
From 2007 up to 2022, there has been a great digital evolution. Back when we started HiPipo, we had pretty much zero foreign viewership of our content and now we have so much foreign audience, which also comes with billions of views for local content in addition to direct foreign investment and remittances, thanks to the likes of YouTube ads and other digital platforms.
The music has always been great in my opinion, but we have seen a lot of progress in the industry. Also, thousands of job opportunities have been created in the music industry and its spillover effect to other sectors. This is encouraging to witness. We are also leveraging Mojaloop to build new instant and inclusive interoperable payment systems that will accelerate payment for music products.
The HiPipo Music Awards recognize talent in East Africa: do you plan to make them continental/international?
I guess, this question is late. We already recognize musicians from across the continent. We’ve hosted musicians from as far as Nigeria, South Africa, and North Africa. We also introduced and awarded acts that are doing well across the continent, and those abroad like Michael Kiwanuka, Joanita Zachariassen. And that’s the beauty of ICT; it naturally connects us to become a global village.
What is the future of African music?
In little words, it’s digital. Have every musician online, earning from caller tunes, streams and podcasts, creating channels where artists can interact with fans online while getting paid, have strong commercialized bases with legal structures, finance, public relations, an African music industry that is structured.
You are also into talent development: what is your story so far?
Let me tell you four short stories to illustrate the impact we have had from collaborating with artists and their management to get them onto formal digital rails. Bobi Wine – in 2009, he didn’t believe internet was relevant to ghetto people, but we helped build up a digital Firebase army (influencers like Ashburg Kato, Joseph Washington, etc.) many of whom are now earning online as social media influencers.
Competitive battles went online. We worked with many artists and didn’t encourage abuse, but that was their style of marketing and media also encouraged it, so we used to counsel them. In 2017 we created a policy that if a musician or fan groups are too abusive, they get suspended from the HiPipo Music Awards until they write to plead their case. The beauty of seeing the ghetto get online is that it also brought up e-shops and people’s careers. We also helped Bobi Wine to verify his Facebook page a few weeks before his Kyadondo East campaigns. I think all this digitization helped Bobi Wine go global.
Sheebah Karungi – She is probably the only female artist around Africa who has won the Artist of the Year award 3 times in a row. We helped counsel her management on what she can do online. Her digital presence and awards helped her get more airplay and revenue too. She stands for woman empowerment, and her digital presence has really helped her career.
Bebe Cool – He positioned himself as a more urban artist, distancing himself a bit from the ghetto, and he loved taking lead in digital embracement in the creative industry. He made good revenue from music caller tunes with telecoms.
He played an advocacy role, and he was an ambassador for our Digital Impact Awards Africa. Bebe Cool naturally bridged the gap between music and digital innovation. Through his own effort and through our input, he accelerated the digital inclusion drive that HiPipo started. Now all the musicians in Uganda have at least Facebook and YouTube accounts, following in part in his footprints.
Golola Moses – This is a kickboxer with such a big brand. We have worked with him for many years, and partly through going digital, he was able to achieve his dream of having a martial arts academy. We also worked with him to produce a film about his life.
Furthermore, the talent of Africans is a massively untapped resource for creating decent employment opportunities, especially in music and sports. Broadening their appeal by going online boosts their careers, but it also creates careers for so many other people in the industry, from influencers to merchandisers and salespeople to coders – it goes on and on.
You produced the first Ugandan movie (Life of a Champion) to make it to Amazon: how did you do it?
One talent that stands out is kickboxer Golola Moses, and Life of a Champion came out of our work with him. We collaborated with many players (NG Films, Koncepts and Sakyas, MET Media, Owaraga Still and Motion, Wakaliwood, and Decent Africa), with HiPipo being the convenor and the leader, to create a standard quality film product with the right sound, lighting, camera effects, editing, captions and everything that counts to make sure it is acceptable on international platforms.
That was part of We Will Win initiative consortium, which aims to create 10 movies a year that meet global standards. As we speak, we’re working in collaboration with Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) and Ideation Corner to raise funding, create capacity building and grow the number of local content viewership. We’re targeting to empower at least 100,000 youth making $3,000, each a year.
We’re getting there, mpola mpola as we say in Uganda. Our mission remains one of long-term contribution to building the environment for ICT and innovation in Uganda, and so far I am satisfied that we have made some impact here. I look forward to seeing what we can do next!
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