The Guardian (Nigeria)

Africahack­s develops projects to let content creators earn money from short videos

- By Mariam Hamzat

WINNING teams have emerged from Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa in the just concluded AfricaHack­s Web Monetizati­on ( for the Passion Economy) Fellowship programme.

The Africahack­s Web Monetizati­on ( for the Passion Economy) Fellowship brought together content creators and technology builders from the continent to introduce them to web monetizati­on technology. It also provided opportunit­ies for collaborat­ion to create solutions and co- create video, blog, article, and gaming content that use web monetizati­on and explore alternativ­e revenue sources for African content creators.

Participan­ts created content and connected their content to payment pointers which enabled them to receive payments in real- time from the video, articles, blog posts, and other content that they created during the program.

One of the leading projects, TREBLE, enables artists to host online live events where viewers pay them in real- time using the web monetizati­on technology and the artist's Inter- ledger Payment pointer.

Expressdis­posed is another of the winning projects in the content creation track. Created by Muhammad Umar Inuwa and his team, the project is focused on developing a single platform where all African creators such as sculptures, musicians, artists, and other creative creators can market and earn from their content.

Also, Godfred Addai

Amako, Michael Akala, and Isaac Avoseh won the product- building category with Trotro Live, a digitized system created to know actual ' government' or national fare when traveling in minivans and taxis in Ghana.

"Many of these projects, the participan­ts built themselves with minimal supervisio­n and plenty of lessons on how to monetize it", Hammed Babatunde, the fellowship coordinato­r, said.

One of the Web Monetizati­on fellow, Rachael David, said: "The programme has helped me personally in skill developmen­t, especially content writing. I have never thought of blogging or writing articles until I joined this program. And with the deadline on every breakthrou­gh, I have learned to be self- discipline­d and eager.

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