Does Uganda Deserve Its Stars? The Case of Joshua Baraka

Uganda, we need to have a very uncomfortable family meeting.

While we are all out here stressing about whether Chris Brown is coming to Uganda or not, one of our own, Gloria Bugie, just held up a mirror, and the reflection is not pretty.

In a social media post, Bugie delivered a statement that has set the internet on fire: “If Joshua Baraka had a foreign flag, Ugandans would respect the talent more.”

Ouch. But can we honestly deny it? Joshua Baraka is an artistic anomaly. A singer, a producer, and a multi instrumentalist whose sound is so refined, it sometimes feels ahead of our industry.

If Baraka were Nigerian, we would already be calling him the new king of Afro fusion.

Bugie did not just stir the pot. She poured the whole kettle on us, and we might be guilty.

Give us a generic Afro-pop act with a foreign passport, and we will sell out Lugogo while screaming the wrong lyrics. But when we are blessed with a talent like Joshua Baraka, we suddenly develop selective amnesia.

We have built this strange mindset where foreign automatically feels better.

So you have to wonder. Is Joshua’s talent so pure that we do not know how to handle it?

This is where we stand, Kampala. We are sleeping on a gold mine while chasing shiny stones overseas.

We cannot keep crying that Ugandan music is dying when we refuse to support the very artists keeping it alive.

At some point, we have to take responsibility. We have to export his brand ourselves and treat him like the superstar he already is.