Like most people, I am not a fan of waiting, hanging around a lobby, listening to music on a loop, sipping drinks while time drags on. I’m an every-minute-counts believer.
Yes, I understand "African time" is a thing, but I also understand that when your promotional material says 7 pm, it should mean 7pm. That small detail matters, especially when it comes to live events.
So I stood outside the Hall of Africa at Mövenpick for an hour waiting for the Nairobi International Comedy Festival closing gala to start, thinking to myself that the organisers had dropped the ball. But when the show eventually began, I discovered that I was wrong, very wrong.
Last week, August 12 to 17, Nairobi hosted a cocktail of stand-up shows across Nairobi Laugh Bar, Baraza Media Lab, and Under a Swahili Tree. The comedy festival pulled talent from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe/ UK, and the US.
There were showcases for women, debates, children shows with puppets, late-night mixers, and the kind of cross-border banter that only a regional festival can produce. The closing gala brought a mix of styles and nationalities into one room, and despite the rough start, it was a lot of fun.
Opening notes
The stage had a black backdrop with artworks mounted across it. As someone who went through art institutions and is pro art, those artworks felt like visual noise to me.
They would have worked better outside the performance space, where people could study them without having to compete with jokes.
Then there was a fashion segment before the show. That felt unnecessary, and given how late everything already was, it diluted the build rather than adding to it.
Security gave us a thorough safety briefing and even a number to call in an emergency, which was oddly professional for a comedy gig and, to be honest, comforting.
Doug Mutai opened with thank-yous to sponsors and handed off to Mammito, who was the host for the evening. Mammito came in, like all the acts that followed, with a soundtrack, All My Enemies Are Suffering for her, and had to loop Doug back in to reintroduce her.
She warmed the room with a slow, conversational style that built into several running bits. She leaned hard into a C-section gag and turned it into her tag for the night, owning the label "C-S" lady.
She touched on Zimbabwe’s currency, Ugandan politics, relationships, sugar mummies, sucking toes, and BDSM. She did a particularly off-colour recurring riff about a lesbian couple that strangely worked when she returned to it.
Here’s the thing about Mammito. She uses a slow, reflective delivery. There are pauses that creates affinity to her presence and lets the audience walk with her thought process. But it also slows momentum.
I thought she’d be more effective paired with someone who has a contrasting style, someone who could bounce off her and punch the pace up, like Ty Ngachira. Paired right, those gaps become openings for new angles and quicker tags.
As a host, she did the job. She warmed us and moved the show along. I just wish the night’s rhythm had been tighter.
Amandeep Jagde opened the stand-up acts. He brought his familiar, abrasive sense of humour and a bold bit on sand. His set riffed on midlife crisis, tattoos, racism, and being Indian in Kenya.
For returning audience members, it was familiar material. For newcomers, it must have been okay based on the reaction as he left the stage.
Sundiata Mok followed with storytelling that leaned into religion, churches in Uganda, prayers, and the hazards of sending the wrong WhatsApp message to the wrong group. His jokes were well-constructed, and the set moved cleanly.
My critique is predictable punchlines. Sundiata would gain by folding in unpredictable pivots , throw a wild tag when everyone expects the familiar. Still, his pacing kept the audience with him.
Lights out
And then the lights went out. Twice. The venue had a serious power issue. That explained the hour we’d spent outside.
The blackout frustrated everyone, host included, but the comics turned it into content. The failure became a running gag. Crowd work kicked in, and the night recovered.
An important stand-up skill: when the tech betrays you, make it part of the show instead of letting it derail the flow.
Several acts used the blackout for callbacks and riffs, and that improvisational energy actually raised the room.
David Macharia came in and tried to lift the energy. I thought he should have been earlier. His material felt familiar to anyone who’s seen him, the absurd premises about vapes, babies, and flavoured breast milk are a personal favourite and I love people's reaction everytime.
My only ask is for him to play the structure differently sometimes. If you’ve seen the set, a reshuffle of tags or a fresh framing can make it thrill the second time around.
King Kandoro from Zimbabwe commanded the stage with movement, animated delivery, and presence. He used the whole space, baiting attention from corner to corner.
His research on Kenya paid off. He mined Kenyan-Zimbabwe parallels, politics, inflation, class, and folded in personal stuff: fatherhood, relationships, life in the UK. His bit about Kenyan women being his weakness landed because it was specific and confident. Kandoro started high and had a slight dip toward the end.
If he tightened the arc so the energy never rolls off, he would end with a knockout closer rather than a gentle fade. But he set was a lot of fun.
Hillary Okello from Uganda built his set around one clear theme: money. Range Rovers, pets, bedroom priorities, wedding dynamics, he threaded everything back to cash.
The predictability of his punchlines worked in his favour. The audience knew the beats and could anticipate the punchline, which made the room complicit. That sense of his setup can’t be underappreciated. His set felt disciplined, focused, and controlled.
Clayton Msosa from Tanzania , yes, the only Tanzanian who speaks good English, brought grounded material about language, African mothers, and food. He closed with a small, almost poetic gag about love.
Placement hurt him. He would have cut better earlier in the show, maybe before Kandoro and Hillary. In his slot, after high-energy acts, his calm approach felt like a downward shift. That’s not a knock on the material. It’s a reminder that running order sometimes shapes reception.
Justine Wanda did great. She keeps rearranging and re-tagging familiar bits so they feel fresh. I’ve seen her three times in less than a month, and each performance retools material just enough to surprise.
That kind of active editing is a useful example for other acts on the card. Reorder, reframe, re-tag. Make the familiar unpredictable.
Vafa Naraghi from South Africa closed the night. Vafa has been performing in Kenya enough to feel like one of us. He used the blackout and Zimbabwe regional rivalries to craft a set that jumped between politics, identity, and dating. He’s a storyteller who rides the crowd’s raection and allows his routines to pivot based on response.
That improvisational give-and-take created an entertaining set. When he leaned into crowd work mixed in with mastered routines, the room followed.
Conclusion
Even with power and lighting issues, this closing gala was a cocktail of different stand-up flavours. The international mix produced banter you only get when comics from different countries riff on each other. It was satisfying.
It was exposure, cross-pollination, and the chance to see regional talent in one room for a week. We should recognise the privilege of that.
And what I think this really means is we can push further. Imagine cultural institutions like Alliance Française, Goethe-Institut, and the British Council partnering with festival organisers to send these comedians on a regional tour: Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, and South Africa.
The government might call it exporting talent. I would call it pole-vaulting the Kenya stand-up talent to the world
