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

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

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 program 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.

Grant for the Web and Chimoney powered the program with internet data and prizes. Interested participants are encouraged to join the next cohort by applying at apply.africahacks.com.