Ugandan dancer and entertainer Ritah Danchall is drawing a line in the sand. Speaking candidly to a YouTuber in a conversation that has since caught fire online, she laid out a hard truth that many of her peers in the performance industry have been too afraid to say out loud: professional dancing in Uganda is no longer paying the bills the way it once did, and TikTok sits squarely at the center of that shift.
Her response? Pack up the dance shoes, at least partially, and pivot to music.
From Shs 1 Million to Shs 300,000: A Market in Freefall
The numbers Ritah shared are striking in their bluntness. Where a performance booking once reliably fetched around Shs 1 million, the same call now comes in with an offer closer to Shs 300,000. That is a drop of 70 percent, and it is not driven by a shrinking demand for entertainment. If anything, people want more of it. The problem, she argues, is who is supplying it.
According to Ritah Danchall’s interview, the explosive growth of TikTok has created a vast, informal pool of performers who are willing to show up at events for rates that established professionals simply cannot match without devaluing their craft. Clients, naturally, are taking the cheaper option.
She described the rhythm of her current month in unsparing terms: for every booking that pays what her experience and skill are worth, there are multiple others dangling figures that would barely cover transport costs. One fair-paying client a month. The rest, a negotiation she is no longer interested in having.
The TikTok Effect on Live Performance Markets
What Ritah is describing is not unique to Uganda. Across Africa and the wider global entertainment economy, short-form video platforms have fundamentally disrupted the perceived value of performance skills. When someone with a smartphone and a good internet connection can rack up a million views doing a dance routine in their bedroom, the psychological barrier between amateur and professional dissolves in the audience’s mind, even if the technical gap remains enormous.
Event organizers, particularly those working with tighter budgets, now have a ready argument: why pay a seasoned professional when they can book someone with 200,000 TikTok followers who will perform for a fraction of the cost and bring their own online audience to the event? It is a logic that is brutal in its simplicity and devastating in its long-term consequences for the industry.
The irony is sharp. TikTok has made dance more visible and more celebrated than at almost any other point in modern popular culture. Yet the very platform amplifying the art form is simultaneously devaluing the people who have spent years mastering it. Virality and professional viability are, it turns out, very different things.
When Exposure Does Not Pay the Rent
There is a familiar argument that circulates whenever creative professionals push back against low rates: the exposure is worth it. Post the performance, tag the client, grow the following. For a new dancer trying to build a name, that logic has some merit. For someone with years of professional experience already behind them, it is an insulting proposition dressed up in marketing language.
Ritah’s frustration speaks to a broader crisis of creative labour valuation. The moment a skill becomes democratized through technology, society tends to assume that the skill itself has lost its worth. That assumption ignores the difference between someone who can cook a decent meal and a Michelin-starred chef. Dancing for TikTok and dancing professionally for a live audience are not the same discipline, but the market is currently treating them as interchangeable.
Music as the Next Chapter
Her decision to shift focus toward music is a pragmatic one, and it deserves to be read that way rather than as a retreat. Music, particularly in Uganda’s entertainment landscape, offers revenue streams that dance performance increasingly struggles to match: streaming royalties, music video sponsorships, branded collaborations, and concert appearances that position the artist as the main draw rather than a supporting act.
It is a transition that other multi-talented performers have made before her, and those who navigate it successfully tend to be the ones who carry their performance background into the new lane. A dancer who becomes a music artist does not leave that physical charisma at the door. If anything, it becomes a competitive advantage in a space where stage presence is everything.
Ritah still accepts dancing gigs when the money makes sense. She has not walked away from the craft entirely. But the days of treating dance performance as a reliable primary income stream appear to be behind her, and she is honest enough to say so publicly rather than pretend the market has not changed.
What This Means for Uganda’s Creative Economy
Ritah Danchall is one voice, but her experience almost certainly reflects a pattern playing out across the country’s entertainment sector. When established performers start exiting a discipline because the economics no longer work, what follows is usually a race to the bottom that ultimately harms everyone, including the newer performers who undercut the rates in the first place.
If the going rate for a dance performance continues to fall, the incentive to invest in serious training, proper choreography, and the years of practice required to genuinely excel at the craft diminishes alongside it. The short-term beneficiary is the event organizer with a smaller budget. The long-term cost is a professional dance industry hollowed out from within.
Platforms, event organizers, and audiences all have a role to play in reversing this trend. Paying fair rates for skilled, experienced performers is not charity. It is how industries sustain themselves. TikTok will keep producing new faces. The question is whether Uganda’s entertainment market will remember how to tell the difference between a viral moment and genuine professional artistry.
Is the entertainment industry sleepwalking into a future where professional performers can no longer make a living from their craft, or is there still time to reset the value placed on genuine skill and experience?
