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Akintunde Sultan
Akintunde Sultan

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Web monetization in Africa - Final Report.

Last year (2020) around July, the announcement was made public that I'm now a Grantfortheweb grantee, the first in Nigeria. Earlier before this, I've been interested in the whole concept of web monetization. This was supposed to be a 6-months program but it's been over a year and there's still so much to do. I guess if you like and understand something, you're not bound by time-frames.

Progress on objectives and key activities

My key goal was to put the word "Web monetization" on the lips of as many people in Africa as possible. And yes we did that. Either through conferences, interviews, tweets, short workshops or even Question and Answer sessions online.

Talking about Web monetization

When you love something, no amount of talking is too much, A recap of few of the major conferences where we had conversations about Web monetization and what it means to be web monetized as a web user:

The future of Micropayment

Web monetization for starts in AfricaHackz

StartConFest20 X Web monetization

Web monetization with the GDG student club and Angular Kenya

Developer student Club, University of Ibadan

Unstack Conference

Mozilla Festival - Alternative Business models

Web monetization with Hashnode AMA

In Streaming color : Season 1 - web monetization

Pycon Africa

The future of Micropayment

The future of Micropayment
An interesting session hosted by Amber Case where we discussed about the future of micropayment in relation to web monetization.

Web monetization + startups in AfricaHackz

Web monetization + startups in AfricaHackz
NaijaHacks is a Africa Hackethon organisation, one of the largest in the country. We had a session about the concept of web monetization and how this could be included in their hackathon solution.

Web monetization with the GDG student club and Angular Kenya

GDG student club and Angular Kenya
The tech ecosystem in Kenya is one the fastest growing in Africa, filled with thousands of young engineering talents, we had an introduction to web monetization for the university students of the Google Developers Student Club and the Angular Community in Kenya.

Unstack Conference

Unstack Conference
The unstack Conference is an annual tech conference that holds in Nigeria, it was remotely handled this year with close to 3000 attendees, we had an introduction to web monetization session where attendees get to ask questions about web monetization as a source of revenue and also as a technology system.

Web monetization with Hashnode AMA

Web monetization with Hashnode AMA
Hashnode is one of the leading developer blogging system on the internet, featuring alot of community exposure to tech contents, I had a web monetization AMA on Hashnode where we went over various topics concerning web monetization in general, the adoption here in Africa and how it's helping with privacy protection on the web.

In Streaming color : Season 1 - web monetization

In Streaming color
In Streaming Color is a 25-hour live streaming event to help raise donations for minority charitable organizations through the talents of content curators, world-class speakers and instructors, and storytellers. I spoke about web monetization, touching points on revenue generation, differences with ads and subscription models and how easy individuals and platform can adopt this technology.

Developer student Club, University of Ibadan

Developer student Club
The developer student club in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria is one of the latest student body in technology in Nigeria, we held a session to introduce students to the concept of web monetization, both as a means to generate revenue and also opening their eyes to the difference between web monetization and other models such as ads and subscription based model.

StartConFest20 X Web monetization

StartConFest20 X Web monetization

StartConFest20 is a hybrid(Onsite +Online) conference that took place in roothub Uyo. I spoke to the attendees about the idea and applications of web monetization.

root hub Uyo
It was one of the interesting hybrid conference I really enjoyed.

Pycon Africa

Pycon Africa
A Q & A panel session with other tech experts in the African tech ecosystem to discuss the growth of technology adoption on the continent. A python Conference popularly known as Pycon is one of the largest gathering of Python developers in the continent.

Mozilla Festival - Alternative Business models

Alternative Business models
An interesting panel session that discussed the alternative business models for revenue generation on the web. With thousands of attendees and over 10,000 video views.

What's NEXT???

The adoption of web monetization in Africa would not become mainstream in a day, continuous and active education is needed, at this time the goal is to continue the advocacy and create resources around these, give more talks and organise more hackathons. We do hope to have the Hashnode + Web monetization hackathon for technical writers soon.

We would also be encouraging folks on the continent to build products around the web monetization ecosystem, help youtube and twitch content creators add web monetization to their channels and bring in the local news outlets on.

And a final update to DevCareer would be pushed out very soon.

A really big thank you to Dees, Chris, Erika, and the rest of the Grant for the Web team for the opportunity to start this new growth phase for content creators in Africa.

Top comments (2)

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

You are a great WM hype man! Thanks for all your work!

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victoriac profile image
Victoria Coker

Congrats Akintunde. Some of my family is from Nigeria so I understand the importance web monetization could make for creators , developers and entrepreneurs there. Best of luck on your work.