YouTube Turns Eight, SA and Kenya Biggest African Markets

World’s largest video sharing platform, YouTube turns eight this week with a record 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. The portal was developed in 2005 by three American techies Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim and later acquired by Internet giant Google a year later.

Kenya and Uganda are the only East African states that have a dedicated YouTube country channel that was launched in 2011 to encourage users to load local video content.

In January this year, the Kenya Elections YouTube Channel was launched, a portal where voters, journalists and campaigners could easily track news, trends and information related to the March 4 poll. The channel aired live the two presidential debates, helping connect leaders with Kenyans in the diaspora.

“Millions of partners are creating content for YouTube and more than 1,000 companies worldwide have mandated a one-hour mid-day break to watch nothing but funny YouTube videos. Well, we made that last stat up, but that would be cool (the other stats are true),” YouTube said in a blog post.

Data from Google shows that South Africa leads the region with most playbacks followed by Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.