Vision's top 100 celebrities survey is back!

When, in 1990, Forbes magazine set out to compile the first list of the world’s Top 100 celebrities, they were doing something that had probably been asking to be done for a long time. Celebrities had become a major figure in people’s lives and, for better or for worse, influenced what people do. From the choice of clothes you wear to what music one will listen to, to just wanting to know what the well-off are up to. But first, they had to work out what it is that makes a celebrity; and work out parameters to determine that.

The dictionary defines celebrity as ‘a condition of fame and broad public recognition of an individual or group, as a result of attention given them by mass media’. But if we are to break it down to its bare essentials, the Top 100 is basically a measure of fame and fortune. “We try and measure a celebrity’s power and we look at two metrics to do that,” then Forbes senior editor, Matthew Miller, said. “We look at money and we look at fame.”

But in its early lists, Forbes depended mostly on fortune, or how much money a celebrity made over a calendar year, usually between June and May. Using that formula, the first to top the list was Michael Jordan in 1999. The next decade saw Julie Roberts, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Jennifer Aniston and Mel Gibson top the lists. Others were Oprah Whitney (who topped it four times), and Angelina Jolie.

Then Forbes decided to factor in fame, or ‘media visibility’, which was measured by the number of mentions a celebrity got in the media, which included newspapers, TV, radio and magazines.

They created an algorithm that amalgamates all that data and comes out with rankings. But along the way, social media was becoming a greater influence on celebrities’ fame and fortunes and any measure had to factor in the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, among others.

The years 2010-2019 thus saw Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, and Floyd Mayweather Jr (twice) top the lists. Others were Oprah again, Taylor Swift (twice) and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.

However, because social media was based on the number of ‘likes’, which are easily manipulated and are rarely dynamic, Forbes in 2019 decided to omit social media altogether and went back to rankings based on earnings.

The existence of bots (from ‘robots’, bots are automated programmes used to engage in social media), and fake accounts made it difficult to identify true followers. The 2020 Forbes list is in fact now referred to as ‘Highest paid Celebrities’, and was topped by Kylie Jenner and Kanye West.

It was dominated by sportsmen though, with five of them in the Top 10. They included Roger Federer (third), Cristiano Ronaldo (fourth), Lionel Messi (fi fth), Neymar (seventh), and LeBron James (nineth). The highest paid actor, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, came 10th. The only sportswoman in the Top 100 was tennis player Naomi Osaka, who was 90th.

Juliana performing on stage

 10 YEARS OF TOP 100 CELEBRITIES IN UGANDA 

The first compilation of Uganda’s top celebrities was in 2009, when the City Beat magazine had the Kabaka of Buganda on its cover as the country’s top celebrity. It caused not a little outrage among some Baganda traditionalists, who felt it was not becoming to include the sovereign in what some termed a ‘popularity contest’.

Just like that story, celebrity listings have always been met with controversy. While those that made the list celebrated, the ones that missed out sought to discredit the whole exercise; and at one time, a musician’s supporters demonstrated outside the New Vision offices when their ‘man’ was ranked lower than his contemporaries.

Since that 2009 list was compiled mainly from media mentions (it was and still is almost impossible to measure celebrities’ earnings and thus fortunes, in Uganda), it was dominated by musicians, who filled our newspapers.

Bobi Wine was second, followed by Chameleone (third) and Bebe Cool (fourth). Juliana Kanyomozi was sixth, and the Goodlyfe Crew (Radio and Weasel) came in seventh. Others in the Top 10 in 2009 were Brian Umony, who played professional soccer in South Africa at #five, David Obua (professional soccer in Scotland) at #eight, Maggie Kigozi, who was then chairperson of the Uganda Investment Authority was nineth; and fashion designer Sylvia Owori 10th.

That list included such diverse people like the then ICT minister Ham Mulira (16th), the Nnabagereka of Buganda (48th), several rugby players (Allan Musoke – 33rd, Robert Seguya — 38th, Timothy Mudoola — 65th), nightclub owners (Charlie Lubega of Ange Noir – 90th, Elvis Sekyanzi of Club Silk — 94th); businessmen (Sudhir Ruparelia — 22nd, Gordon

Wvaamunno — 31st, Patrick Bitature – 35th, James Mulwana — 45th), and even pastors (Robert Kayanja — 13th, Martin Sempa — 57th).

One weird phenomenon in those days was that, unlike in the developed world where media (especially tabloids and paparazzi) chased celebrities, in Uganda celebrities chased the media to get media mentions.

Anne Kansiime

 RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA 

In 2009, social media was not that wide-spread in Uganda. It was seen as something that people with nothing to do waste their time on. But then Anne Kansiime, then a little known member of the Fun Factory comedy group, recorded her skits, uploaded them on YouTube and became an instant hit. By 2014, when the New Vision was compelled to include social media standings in its rankings, Kansiime was way ahead of everyone else. She may not have had many media mentions and her live acts may not have been very popular, but she was the queen of social media. The net result was that this small person from Kabale has dominated celebrity rankings for almost a decade.

When the last New Vision celebrities list was published in January 2019, Kansiime had almost four million followers on Facebook. The closest to her were Eddie Kenzo and Juliana Kanyomozi, both with just over one million followers. We probably have to wonder how much of Kansiime’s numbers were made up of bots and how many actual followers.

Facebook and Twitter recently went on an exercise of cleaning up accounts and many people lost a big chunk of what they thought were followers. It would be interesting to see if Kansiime can retain her lead this year.

Another constant on Uganda’s celebrity lists is Juliana Kanyomozi, who has been described as ‘Uganda’s sweetheart’. Juliana is something of an anomaly in Uganda’s celebrity universe; she does not court controversy, has never been known to fight anybody and is not that active as an entertainer, but Ugandans just love her. If there was a ‘likeness’ index in the celebrity algorithm, she would probably win it every time.