For years, African creators have populated global platforms with culture-defining content, from viral dance trends to niche education and commentary.
Yet, despite their global reach, most remain cut off from the economic benefits their Western counterparts enjoy.
This inequality isn’t just about the number of followers or the quality of content. It’s about infrastructure or the lack of it.
A creator in Accra or Nairobi with 100,000 followers on TikTok often earns significantly less than a creator in London or Los Angeles with the same audience size. And the reason isn’t always visibility. It’s structural: unequal platform payouts, limited access to global payment systems, and platform designs that don’t consider African financial realities.
“It’s an ecosystem issue,” says Douglas Kendyson, CEO of Selar, a digital commerce platform designed specifically for African creators. “You have people creating globally-consumed content, but who can’t access their earnings, or even monetize meaningfully because the tools weren’t built with them in mind.”
Kendyson is one of a growing number of African tech entrepreneurs working to fill that gap.
Launched in Nigeria, Selar has grown to become one of the continent’s leading platforms for digital creators, enabling them to sell everything from e-books to online courses and event tickets, in multiple currencies and payment methods tailored to the African market.
The challenge Selar is tackling isn’t small. Major platforms like TikTok have payout structures that rely on systems like PayPal and Stripe, which either don’t work or are limited in many African countries.
In Ghana, for example, PayPal is not fully supported for receiving payments, cutting off a major revenue stream for creators who rely on those platforms’ monetisation schemes.
This has created a clear divide in the global creator economy, one where African creators are often left to find “workarounds” just to get paid.
“When we built Selar, we didn’t want African creators to need hacks to do global business,” Kendyson explains. “We wanted them to have a straightforward, dignified way to monetise their knowledge and skills.”
Since its founding, Selar has paid out over $5 million to creators across the continent, becoming a powerful force in Africa’s growing digital economy. The platform supports local payment systems and even international card payments, making it one of the few creator-focused tools built with African payment flows at its core.
“This is more than just about creators. It’s about ensuring that Africa has a fair stake in the global knowledge and creator economy.”
Douglas Kendyson, CEO of Selar,
But Selar’s impact goes beyond infrastructure.
Recognising that digital tools alone aren’t enough, the platform has also invested heavily in education and training for creators. Through webinars, campus tours, and free resource materials, Selar is equipping thousands of African creators, especially students and young professionals – with the knowledge to price, package, and promote their work sustainably.
More creators across Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda are now using Selar to bypass restrictive global platforms and earn directly from their audiences.
For example, rather than waiting for YouTube’s AdSense thresholds or TikTok’s Creator Fund (which is unavailable in most African countries), creators are now launching digital products like writing guides, business templates, or niche workshops and selling them directly through platforms like Selar.
In 2025, Selar expanded its presence into East Africa and francophone Africa, opening up its tools and services to creators in those regions and building strategic partnerships with fintech players like Kikiapay to strengthen cross-border payments.
“This is more than just about creators,” says Kendyson. “It’s about ensuring that Africa has a fair stake in the global knowledge and creator economy.”
Still, challenges remain. Platform visibility, algorithmic bias, and limited investor support for creative tech startups continue to stunt growth across the African creator ecosystem. But as local platforms like Selar continue to scale and address these gaps, there’s cautious optimism.
As Ghana doubles down on its ambition to become a digital innovation hub in West Africa, and as the broader creator economy continues to globalise, the question isn’t whether African creators are ready; it’s whether the global ecosystem is finally willing to meet them halfway.
Until then, platforms like Selar are building the bridge, one payout, one product, and one creator at a time.
