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Dylan Dzenga Youth Interactive Writer
As times change, many youths are taking chances and risking it all to make their passion abd talents, their professions.
The new generation continues to move on from the old ways of taking up the so called “safe career path” that guarantees employment and creating employment with their talents.
Munashe Bandawa, whose stage name is Miles, is an upcoming comedian making waves on social media platforms.
He is a 21 year-old Chitungwiza resident studying media and marketing communication at the University of Zimbabwe.
It can be quite challenging for mostly youths in the arts industry to choose their career paths. Most parents want their children to go for social work and law, shunning their children’s dreams out.
Miles has been through all but still managed to convince his parents to let him choose his own path.
“Honestly speaking, my mother wanted me to study Social work, and just hearing that NGOs pay a lot i was so focused on studying just that.”
“As I waited for my Advanced Level results, I began to have an appreciation of the media. I’m a very social person, so I started trying out TikTok videos and the response was overwhelming.”
The University of Zimbabwe has been recently showing mutual support for the arts students since the introduction of Education 5.0 which is promoting more practice than theory.
It is also because of the system that Munashe managed to link his passion and a professional course.
“Most people would ask why I would chose Media and Marketing Communication instead of Theatre Arts so I would always say I cannot go and study what I’m already good at, but chose what I’m not.”
“Many comedians have risen in Zimbabwe, but their careers always end early because of the lack of skills to market their content. So as for me I see my comedy skills and my marketing degree syncing together and success is guaranteed.”
Miles’ viewership statistics on social media are highly impressive. On TikTok, the comedian has a minimum of 145k views, Instagram 14.5k views and Facebook views are around 5k.
“ When I started, I was a bit unsure of what people would think of me and my skits so I saw Youtube as a bigger shot that needed me to try out other platforms before I got there so, for YouTube, I recently created a channel but I would say there’s positive response.”
Content creators in Zimbabwe have been struggling to expand their ideas. That comes with also a lot of financial problems.
Advertising is one of the most dependable source of finance for content creators and Miles has high chances of starting advertising very soon as his viewership is big enough and mostly local as well.
“I would say the challenges I have faced as a content creator, the major one would be data issue. The data prices can be very disturbing sometimes and sometimes I would have to go for days without posting anything because of that.
“This path I chose requires consistency, not that you post today and then you post next month. You need to make people keep talking about you, create more content before the old ones lose value, consistency matters and sometimes lack of data makes it difficult to keep up. “
“I have gotten recognition from people like Tinashe Mutarisi and Nelia Kadungure, they repost my videos. I have also participated in the Zim Talent skit competition where I got to meet Enzo Ishall, Yhayha Goodvibes and Comic Pastor.”
Online Reporter