- Egypt’s Creative Crafts in Five Minutes YouTube channel is Africa’s highest-earning channel, with $8.7 million of revenue made since its launch in 2017.
- Algerian cooking YouTuber Oum Walid ($4.9m) and Nigerian comedian Mark Angel ($4.2m) are also among Africa’s most profitable channels.
- Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa all have at least 300 channels with more than 100,000 subscribers. North African countries though lead in viewership & earnings
Egypt’s Creative Crafts in Five Minutes YouTube channel is Africa’s highest-earning channel, with $8.7million of revenue made since its launch in 2017 according to the latest report by CashNet USA.
According to the report, the handy how-to guides have been viewed more than 4 billion times.
Algerian cooking YouTuber Oum Walid ($4.9m) and Nigerian comedian Mark Angel ($4.2m) are also among Africa’s most profitable channels.
According to the report, African YouTubers haven’t been able to reach the viewing figures and earnings like in other continents, but it’s growing.
“Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa all have at least 300 channels with more than 100,000 subscribers. North African countries though lead in viewership & earnings,” the report states.
Surprisingly, RUS love in Action is Kenya’s all time top earning channel at $656,289.
The report shows a majority of the content in Kenya is on animals, Uganda and Tanzania have entertainment content, Rwanda has gaming and Ethiopia has the most Kids content.
“Despite the growing popularity of rival content creation platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Twitch, YouTube is still king. 694,000 hours of video are streamed on the platform every minute,” the report continues.
Kids’ content is booming, with 5 of the 6 continents, boasting a children’s creator as their highest all-time earner.
American kids’ channel Cocomelon is the highest-earning YouTube channel of all time, with an estimated $282.8m amassed from its videos since its creation in 2006.
In 2015, Google launched YouTube for Kids, a TV and mobile app providing a service dedicated to children with stronger parental control features.
The Pew Research Center found that just over one-third (34 percent) of U.S. parents regularly allow their children to watch YouTube videos, but 61 percent reported encountering content that was unsuitable for kids. For this reason, popular content for children receives larger view counts, often into the billions.
“Of the 10 most viewed YouTube videos of all time, five were published by channels creating content for children. With more than 11 billion views, Baby Shark stands head and shoulders above the rest and became a viral sensation back in 2018 and 2019,” the report indicates.
Moving forward, the report says YouTube will remain to be the King of content despite generation-defining competitors like TikTok and Instagram.
“Around the world, YouTube’s growth shows no sign of slowing. YouTube’s popularity among Gen-Z will give Google’s content giant long-term staying power over Facebook and Instagram. While natural competitor Twitch gained mainstream popularity during the pandemic, YouTube’s broad appeal is the key to its superiority,” the report predicts.
Latest data from YouTube indicates that Kenya leads Africa in consuming its content with about 45 percent of Kenyan content being consumed by a global audience compared to Nigeria that has 75 percent of its content consumed by a global audience while South Africa’s content attracts 65 percent of viewers from across the world.
Among the most watched channels in Kenya include Citizen TV, Churchill TV, KTN News, NTV Kenya, K24 TV and Otile Brown who have more than one million subscribers each with one channel boasting of having achieved over a billion views.
According to YouTube, more than 70 percent of watch time happens on mobile devices while YouTube watch time on mobile app devices averages more than 60 minutes per day.
Watch time on YouTube and on television screens alone now tops over 250 million hours per day.
