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Twitter user Dennis Kioko in a series of Tweets mused about the reason why Kenyan videos on YouTube had less views when compared to those from our neighbouring countries Uganda and Tanzania. His main contention was that one would expect that Kenyan videos would have more views because there are more people online in Kenya than in the two East African countries.

His contention is true, by all appearances Kenyan videos should be doing better view-wise than their two East African counterparts. But why aren’t they? Richard Astar Njau, a YouTube enabler, has shared some stats (from 2015) on his Facebook account that explains why Kenyan videos have low views (click on them to enlarge).

YouTube Kenya Numbers

YouTube Numbers Kenya

Content watched

YouTube Numbers Kenya 2

YouTube Kenya demographics

YouTube Numbers Kenya 3

From the infographics, you can see that there are 2 million Kenyans who use YouTube on a monthly basis and cumulatively accrue about 100 million video views a month. Unfortunately, most of the content they watch (83%) is non-Kenyan which just leaves Kenyan YouTube channels only 17%.

Kenyans are clearly watching videos on YouTube, however most of them are not Kenyan. How then do content creators on YouTube get Kenyans to watch their content? What are they doing wrong that their counterparts in other countries are doing right? The answers too these questions might take time to be answered but Kenyan YouTube content creators should probably research what Kenyans on YouTube are consuming and try to create similar content. Also, they need to up their marketing game. Most people with YouTube channels don’t market their content and they just wait to be discovered.

On YouTube there are Kenyans who are getting it right, but it will be interesting to see, going forward, who will be able to grow their fan base and, by extension, their views.