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Otile Brown, Churchill the top YouTube earners in Kenya

By Sylvania Ambani September 22nd, 2022 2 min read

RnB singer Otile Brown and comedian Daniel Ndambuki of Churchill Show are among the top YouTube earners in Kenya. According to statistics shared by YouTube, the two have over one million subscribers with individual channels boasting more than a billion views.

The statistics have also revealed that 400 creators in Kenya are earning more than Sh 1 million per month from content creation on YouTube, with each channel having 100,000 subscribers, the highest in Africa.

Nigeria and South Africa have 300 channels each boasting 100,000 subscribers, following behind Kenya which continues to attract a variety of content from cookery, classroom lessons, music, travel and sports.

YouTube Africa managing director Alex Okosi, while releasing the statistics said that Kenya’s content creation growth also rose to 70 percent. He said several initiatives had been launched to help creators in Kenya to improve the quality of content uploaded on YouTube thereby enhancing the creator’s reach and earning potential.

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“Citizen TV, Churchill TV, KTN News, NTV Kenya, K24 TV, and RnB singer Otile Brown are among the top earners. Kenya leads Africa in consuming its content with a paltry 45 per cent of Kenyan content being consumed by a global audience,” Mr Okosi said.

In Nigeria, 75 percent of its content is consumed by a global audience while South Africa’s content attracts 65 percent of viewers from across the world.

“Africa has an amazing culture and good storytellers who use YouTube to showcase Africa’s diversity. We are committed to enabling these creators to voice their stories and provide access to the rest of the world using YouTube which in the long run leads us too to success,” he said.

YouTube also revealed that it has paid out Sh60 Trillion ($50 billion) in the last three years to Creators.

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Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube said that the company is planning to expand the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) giving more creators and artists an opportunity to make money on YouTube across different creative formats. The program that starts in 2023 will benefit long-form, Shorts, and Live creators enabling them to monetise their content.

The expanded YPP program will make it easy for Shorts-focused creators to apply to YPP by meeting a threshold of 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days. Long-form creators can also apply to join YPP when they reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. To support creators who are early in their YouTube journey, YouTube will also introduce a new level of YPP with lower requirements offering earlier access to Fan Funding features like Super Thanks, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Channel Memberships.

“YouTube is offering a unique revenue sharing model for Shorts for both current and future YPP creators. Because ads run between videos in the Shorts Feed, every month, revenue from these ads will be added together and used to reward Shorts creators and help cover costs of music licensing. From the overall amount allocated to creators, they will keep 45% of the revenue, distributed based on their share of total Shorts views. The revenue share remains the same, no matter if they use music or not,” Susan Wojcicki said.

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sambani@ke.nationmedia.com