Filmmaker and documentarian Tayo Aina, recognized by the Afropolitan show as one of the most vital storytellers of his generation for turning "cities people and moments into meanings for Africans everywhere", offered a candid look into the harsh realities of being an African content creator. His story, shared on the Afropolitan show, reveals a journey fraught with financial precarity, discrimination, and the global economic disparity of the attention economy.
Aina’s early career began in 2017 as an Uber driver in Lagos, a dangerous hustle that followed threats to drivers being killed and their cars stolen. He recounted making meager money—roughly 20,000 naira a week after Uber and the car partner took their respective cuts—which often went entirely to food due to the "stress level that you have is next level" driving in Lagos traffic. This period, however, exposed him to "some of the most interesting places in Lagos", inspiring him to start documenting things to do and places to go using his phone.
The transition to professional content creation was defined by delayed compensation. Aina revealed that despite beginning his YouTube journey in 2017, he didn't make "any money till like 2020". Even when a video on Eko Atlantic garnered 200K to 300K views and earned around $400, he couldn't access the money. YouTube’s monetization process required a physical PIN to be mailed to his address, a process hampered by the unreliability of the Nigerian postal service. Aina had to request the PIN three times, waiting six weeks between requests, until he could manually verify his account. By the time he could finally access his funds in 2020, his savings had accumulated to over $10,000.
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The challenges for African creators are compounded by market economics. Aina learned that making content for the Nigerian market pays significantly less than for the US market. He noted that YouTube is paying Nigerian creators 13 times less for the same amount of views as their US counterparts. As the host pointed out, 1,000 views from Nigerians is worth $1, while 1,000 US views is worth $13. This forces African creators to tailor their content to appeal to US audiences, who are the "holy grail" due to higher advertising budgets. This disparity is why brand deals, which pay more than YouTube for visibility, have been more lucrative for him over time.
Beyond finances, Aina faces severe immigration hurdles simply due to his Nigerian passport. He recounted that his worst travel experiences have come "all from inside Africa". His discrimination culminated in a deeply humiliating experience in Ethiopia, where an immigration official singled him out "just cuz I was Nigerian," checked his camera equipment, and eventually took him to a dingy toilet and demanded he "take a dump in front of him" to prove he wasn't carrying drugs. The experience, coupled with being denied a Dubai visa, prompted him to invest over a year in acquiring a St. Kitts passport.
To succeed despite these constraints, Aina advised aspiring creators on the Afropolitan show to focus on three things they love, start making content, and build a content portfolio until "one of them eventually pops off". He also encouraged creators to think beyond monetization from views alone, citing the need to diversify through ventures like his YouTube Creator Academy, which has trained nearly 3,000 people since 2022. He argues that content should be the "bottom of the tree" from which creators should grow product-based businesses—like MrBeast’s Feastables—as products are far more sustainable than CPMs.
Ultimately, Aina views his work on the Afropolitan show and his overall platform as necessary translation—showing the world from his African perspective—and providing a crucial counter-narrative to negative stereotypes, affirming that Africans are not living in "huts" or being chased by "lions". Although he currently lives in Portugal for better quality of life and ease of travel, he still deeply misses "the food and the people" of Nigeria, viewing the optimal situation as a "hybrid" model that allows him to solve problems and be close to his community while enjoying the infrastructure benefits of being abroad.
