Two names on a YouTube thumbnail are now enough to promise a certain kind of laughter, precise and local: Moustik le Karismatik and Haricot Beans. "The Voters," "Bad Driver," "Thief," "The Handymen," "Bad Math" — the list of sketches they have made together reads like a series. Behind the lightness, there is a project, and a method.
Moustik le Karismatik, real name Hubert Martial Tagne Tagne, was born in Yaoundé, to a father from Bandjoun and a mother from the South. He passed through Lycée de Mballa II and Chad, and took to the stage in the early 2000s, between music and theatre. His sketch "Le témoignage de Lucas," aired in 2010 on CRTV, made him known nationwide. Three Canal 2'Or awards for best Cameroonian comedian followed, in 2014, 2017 and 2019. He earned the nickname "the comedian who stings": his signature is social satire that lands without ever insulting its audience.
Haricot Beans, real name Georges Edzisna, rose by another route. He is one of the three pillars of Les Rigolards de Mbalmayo, alongside Emmanuel Nke, known as Babadi Mista, and Eric Manga, known as Delpiso. The troupe made the web its ground: one short capsule a week, an appointment kept, nearly 600,000 followers on Facebook. Cameroon Tribune summed up their style in a phrase — "humour with local soup": rent, taxis, the young adult still living with their parents, the campaign promise, Cameroonian life in its everyday contradictions.
Their duo is the meeting of two schools. On one side, the national stage, television, seasoned stand-up; on the other, the short format, the troupe, viral distribution. The "feat" — Moustik as a guest of Les Rigolards, or the reverse — becomes a bridge between two generations and two ways of making people laugh. Each keeps his grammar; together, they widen it.
What sets them apart is a work intelligence. Consistency first: the appointment is never missed, and that discipline counts as much as the talent. Then the writing, which always starts from a real observation rather than a gag imposed from outside. Finally the means, deliberately modest, turned into a style: a neighbourhood set, two actors, a quick punchline.
Along the way, they have offered another idea of web comedy. Not a by-product of the stage, but a format in its own right, with its rules — brevity, sharp editing, sharing. And a line: to be funny by filming life as it is, without crude caricature. That standard has set an example for a whole generation of Cameroonian web comedians.
There is also the night side. Moustik himself speaks of the "legendary bar" of Jordane Ngassa and its "stories by night": the kind of informal venue where the scene is tested in front of a real audience, where a joke is worn in before it becomes a capsule. Cameroonian web comedy is worked out as much in the room as on the screen.
Neither Moustik nor Haricot Beans came from nowhere. Behind them stand Edoudoua Non Glacé, thirty years of career celebrated in Yaoundé in 2023, and Zak, who keep the thread with the elders of the scene; Haricot Beans and others, such as Disjoncté, pass through the world of Edoudoua TV. Around them, an extended family — Fingon Tralala, Defo Premier, Gato — keeps Cameroonian stand-up alive. Cameroon's web comedy is a lineage, not a break.
To honour this duo is to salute two men who turned a country gifted at mocking itself into a genuine comedy industry — with no budget, through work and a good ear. They did not only make Cameroon laugh: they taught it to look at itself and smile.
