Magunga takes over from Bikozulu as the Best Blogger in BAKE Awards 2017

Bikozulu (Jackson Biko), do you know him? You should. He is the best, even if he didn’t feature in this year’s BAKE Awards. He didn’t feature, not because he wouldn’t have won, but because BAKE decided he has won enough times. He has been winning ever since I heard of BAKE Awards. He has been the best creative blogger since 2011 – and the best blog of the year since 2014. Others too were locked out by the BAKE’s decision not to register three or more times winners of BAKE Awards into the annual bloggers competition – giving way to new entrants – and that’s why it was easier for Magunga to now be crowned the best blog of the year – and Biz News to get the coveted position of the Best Business Blog.

Last year Magunga stood a slim chance of taking the coveted creative blog award, having been endorsed by Bikozulu for the award. But even though Bikozulu asked not to be nominated for Bake Awards, the gang didn’t listen – they still nominated him both for creative blog and best blog of the year (which we won), and it might seem the decision by the gang to nominate Bikozulu in last year’s bloggers competition despite his humble request to be left out informed BAKE’s 2017 decision to leave out those like Bikozulu and Techmoran into participating in BAKE Awards 2017.

Without the participation of Bikozulu and Techmoran, the BAKE Awards 2017 saw new faces being nominated for one or more of the 23 categories of BAKE Awards (if you asked me, some of the categories need merging). A few of the new faces are the KenyanStory by Eric Vateta (remember him? He used to write with us at Kachwanya.com) who got nominated for best lifestyle blog and best blog of the year. He didn’t win either but given that he started his blogging in August last year, his nomination came as a surprise even to us.

KenyanStory didn’t cling the blog of the year title as this went to Magunga, a creative blogger. Magunga on the other hand has been in the business of blogging for years, even before I knew of the proper definition of blogging. When I started blogging and specifically started reading the works of Bikozulu, Magunga was working in the shadows of the giant. He wrote, then posted his links at the comment section of Bikozulu’s posts. He moderated the comments. And used that platform to grow his blog. He got the prerequisite traffic.

Then he got nominations.

And finally he won.

Joining Magunga into the wins are other names such as Mark Maish of markmaish.com who bagged the award for the creative blog, Kaluhiskitchen.com that took the Food blog award, a title that has traditionally gone to Pikachakula, Potentash who took the best lifestyle blog and yet another new entrant by the name of Nyawira Mumenya of Curveswithstyle.com.

This year’s winners have more reasons to celebrate, as in addition to the increased categories, enhanced media coverage, and even the more prizes they had to take home, Kenyans have come of age to start appreciating blogging not only as a trusted gateway for obtaining prompt information, but also as a career path they can rely on. This was attested when towards the end of last year one of the top trending topics in Kenya for the year 2016 was blogging. Yesterday I talked with a random person in the streets about BAKE Awards and I was surprised that he knew that the awards went down on Saturday evening.

As the year 2017 roll by and we look forward to 2018, we as bloggers do look towards an even more expanded blogosphere, and more particularly we expect to see more thoroughly informative content from the blogging community.