Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram to pay Kenyan creatives from June

Meta

Content creators in Kenya will earn money from postings on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram.

What you need to know:

  • Content creators in Kenya will earn money from postings on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram.
  • President Ruto hailed the move, noting that it will open up new opportunities to earn an income for Kenyan youths.

Content creators in Kenya will earn money from postings on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram from June this year following a deal between President William Ruto and the firm’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg.

In a dispatch following a meeting at State House in Nairobi, the presidential press service said the development is a culmination of a year-long push by the government to have creators earn from their online content as they do on other platforms such as YouTube and X (formerly Twitter).

“Kenyan content creators who meet the eligibility criteria will now earn from their Facebook and Instagram spaces as we start monetisation by June this year,” said Mr Clegg.

On his part, President Ruto hailed the move, noting that it will open up new opportunities to earn an income for Kenyan youths, while calling upon Meta to link payments to M-Pesa.

“Now content creators can begin earning from their imagination and creativity. We are banking on the digital space to create jobs for the millions of jobless youths in our country,” said Dr Ruto.

To qualify for the programme, a creator is required to have at least 5,000 followers on their private Facebook profile or 10,000 followers on a Facebook page and a minimum of five live videos on a profile or three on a page.

Video content posted on a Facebook profile must have a minimum of 60,000 total minutes viewed in the past 60 days from organic followers while, for a page, the requirement is 600,000 viewed minutes within the same duration.

Per industry insiders, Facebook compensates content creators Sh1,074 ($8) to Sh2,685 ($20) per 1,000 views, and the average CPM (Cost Per Mile) in most African countries ranges in the lows of Sh1,074 to Sh1,342 ($10) because the marketing industry is underdeveloped when compared with countries like USA, Australia, Canada, and the UK.

The development comes at a time when fresh data from the Communications Authority of Kenya shows that Facebook has overtaken the instant messaging platform WhatsApp to become the most used social media application in the country, pointing to vast earning potential for creators once the monetisation feature goes live.