President William Ruto has challenged the youth to embrace the massive income generating opportunities that online streaming channel YouTube offers today.
Speaking on Tuesday during the closing ceremony of YouTube Black Voices at State House, Nairobi, Ruto said the video-sharing platform generated over Sh4 trillion in revenue in 2021 alone.
He said individuals with channels that offered music videos, news video clips, short and feature films, songs, documentaries and trailers, live streams and vlogs benefitted from this windfall.
"The users who upload more than 500 hours of content every minute earn a share of this revenue. As a result, YouTube has become a major employer with many creatives finding more than decent livelihoods on it," Ruto said.
The event was attended by Alex Okosi, YouTube emerging markets managing director and Agnes Gathaiya, country director, Google Kenya and East Africa.
Several distinguished YouTubers from Kenya and the region were also in attendance.
The President said with at least 2.5 million people engaging on YouTube monthly with more than a billion hours of video views daily, the platform offers real self-employment opportunities that need to be exploited.
He said the platform has empowered content creators to become entrepreneurs by enabling them to monetise their channels through advertising revenue, brand partnerships and merchandise sales.
Ruto urged the youth to leverage on this aspect, innovate and build viable businesses.
He said content creators in Africa have more space to leverage on the conducive creative ecosystem that is yet to be fully exploited.
"Year-on-year, the number of creators generating 100k monthly has risen by more than 15 per cent in Nigeria, while in South Africa, the figure is double at 30 per cent and here in Kenya, 25 per cent," Ruto said.
"The growth in the number of channels with more than a million subscribers is also impressive: Nigeria more than 50 per cent, South Africa over 30 per cent and Kenya more than 110 per cent."
