Long before podcasts, Uganda gathered around the radio drama — serialized plays that turned health campaigns and social debates into unmissable evening entertainment.
That craft is being rediscovered. New studios are producing scripted audio series in Luganda, English and Swahili, distributed as podcasts and streamed on demand.
The economics finally work: cheap data, smartphones and a diaspora audience hungry for stories from home have turned audio drama from nostalgia into a business.
Veteran radio actors find themselves mentoring twenty-something producers; the older generation brought the craft, the younger one brought the distribution.
“The serialized radio play never really died in Uganda — it just waited for podcasting to give it…”
The result is a distinctly Ugandan sound — dramatic, funny, moral in the best tradition of the genre — finding ears far beyond the FM dial.
