By Juliet Umeh
To sustain African heritage, YouTube has
empowered over 4000 content creators in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.
The creators who celebrated their graduation at the weekend from an eight-week intensive programme tagged: “Made for You” are to share their diverse stories like music, food, and cultural insights with a worldwide audience..
Speaking during the graduation ceremony in Lagos, Tutu Laditan said the eight-week programme came with a curriculum which provided the participants with the basic strategy to transition from producing content to becoming recognized content creators, with popularity across the globe. She explained: “They gained essential skills in areas such as content strategy, audience engagement, and monetization of their YouTube Shorts thereby contributing significantly to Africa’s creative economy.”
Laditan noted that the empowerment becomes necessary because YouTube needed to pull in more local content.
According to her, “You could start on YouTube Shorts and you would be watching a trending video but before you know it, you have moved to content in India.
“So, we thought that if people are really going to find value on the platform, we need to support our local creators. And that’s what ‘Made For You’ was doing, bringing in more of these local guys to do things in their local language like recipes, dance, whatever, and then share their talent.
“We recruited over 8,000 creators across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and we trained over 4,000 of them. And, we have been doing graduation ceremonies for the first cohort across the different countries. Today in Nigeria, we are graduating over 400 creators.
“The successful creators will now be integrated into the official Shorts community under the guidance of Community Partnership Managers, CPMs. They will now consider themselves as part of an official YouTube Shorts Community.
“This milestone is just the beginning of their journey because YouTube is committed to their ongoing support through advanced workshops, networking opportunities, and potential integration into broader YouTube will be available to speak to you on the Made For You initiative and give more insights.”
Laditan, however, expressed optimism on the contribution of the content creators to Nigerian gross domestic product, GDP.
She said: “We are seeing that if we bring in more creatives, as they grow, they will hire people because you can’t be the only person editing your video, doing your behind the screen, writing your script.
“So, you might begin to hire people that do all that thereby creating more employment,” Laditan expressed.