"I spent two years in my apartment without moving," he added, "and I realized there was another part of my life that I wanted to continue exploring."

The program achieved great fame with its former presenter, Jon Stewart, who hosted it for 16 years before stopping in 2015.

The choice of then-unknown Trevor Noah to succeed Stewart came as a surprise to many.

There are currently no indications as to the identity of the person who will present the program after Noah leaves.

"With no timetable for his departure, we are still working together on the next steps," Paramount Global Network, which owns Comedy Central, which broadcasts the program, said in a statement distributed to US media.

Noah details his upbringing in apartheid South Africa as the son of a black South African mother and a white Swiss-German father in his 2016 best-selling memoir Born A Crime.

Noah said, "I loved presenting this program. It was one of the biggest challenges I faced and one of the greatest sources of happiness for me."

bur-dafa/jk/bq