Kenyan YouTube content creators have been ranked the highest YouTube earners in Africa, parting with roughly over Kes1 million per month.

The creators are in the lead with 400 channels having 100,000 subscribers each, a gesture which has seen the number of the top earners up by 60 percent over the past year.

Rival countries Nigeria and South Africa have 300 channels each boasting 100,000 subscribers.

The high rate is attributed to the wide variety of content from cooking, classroom lessons, music, sports, and travel, an offering that a high number of YouTube users cannot resist.

YouTube Africa Managing Director Alex Okosi, while releasing the statistics said Kenya’s content creation growth rose to the highest pace of 70 percent.

“Citizen TV, Churchill TV, KTN News, NTV Kenya, K24 TV and RnB singer-songwriter Otile Brown have more than one million subscribers each, with two channels having reached more than a billion views,” Mr Okosi said.

Mr Okosi, however, raised a concern that just 45 percent of Kenyan content is being consumed by a global audience.

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Nigeria has up to 75 percent of its content being consumed by a global audience while South Africa’s content attracts 65 percent of viewers from across the world.

Mr Okosi has, however, assured the creators of efforts to enable them to voice their stories and provide access to the rest of the world using YouTube, a video-sharing channel that enjoys an average of over 60 minutes of watch time daily on mobile app devices. Its watch time on TV screens alone is more than 250 million hours daily.

According to US securities regulators’ data, YouTube made Kes3.476 trillion in 2021,  a 46 percent increase compared to its 2020 earnings of Kes2.377 trillion.

YouTube’s revenue peaked in the fourth quarter of 2021 at Kes1.042 trillion. In the three months to March 2022, the earnings lowered to Kes829 billion before settling at Kes885.9 billion by the end of June.

Meanwhile, YouTube has announced plans to expand the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) aimed at giving more creators and artists an opportunity to earn more on the platform.

The program that starts in 2023 will benefit long-form, Shorts and Live creators enabling them to monetize their content.

According to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, YouTube have paid creators, artists and media companies enrolled on YPP more than $ 50 billion (Kes60.3 trillion) over the last three years.

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