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Africa's Bookstagrammers are Carving Out a Space for the Continent's Authors

Growing communities of social media users, spread all over the continent, are evolving into a major powerhouse for African literature.

As Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams’ hit song, ‘Water’ plays overhead, Nokukhanya Ntsaluba sits in front of a bookshelf at her home in South Africa, red lipstick highlighting her luminous smile, as she holds up, in quick succession, five of her favorite books by African writers.

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Here's Our List of This Year's Most Popular TikTok Creators From The Continent

Laughter was the medicine of choice this year, and these African creators did their part in healing the masses.

TikTok, the video and music sharing social media app taking over the lives of those young and old, has been this year's ultimate tool for connecting with the global communities. The app was initially released in 2016 but gained major popularity in 2019. With the rise in popularity came scrutiny, as creators of color and those not from Western countries found that their content and voices were being silenced, blackballed, and often times removed for no reason at all. More often than not, the popular dances, trends, and sounds came from the minds of the TikTok population who were then given little to no credit or attention for their creativity. And a year and a half after TikTok's formal apology to the Black creators on their app, not much has changed.

Twenty twenty-one, however, saw African and Black TikTok creators take the app to greater measures than ever seen before. Senegalese-Italian creator,Khabane "Khaby" Lame is currently the most followed TikTok creator, sitting at a cool 123.3 million followers. The creator's one-of-a-kind videos, where he silently mocks the magnificently-silly things we humans do to ourselves, range between 7M and 297M views and have the star averaging 1.9 billion likes across his account. Nigerian-American creator and designer Uyi Omorogbecurrently sits at 3.4 million followers as his Annoying My African Parents series remains popular and relevant to young Africans around the world. Self-proclaimed International Slay Mama Beverly Adaeze's skits throw us in stitches as her characters force us to recollect the mental strength it takes to handle an African woman, as the Nigerian-American beauty mixes fashion, comedy, and beauty on her platform. While South African crooner Lloyiso uses his magnetic voice to bring South African R&B to the world.

Here's our list of the most popular African TikTok creators!

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