Fifty-six percent of Nigerian creators earn less than $100 a month. Not because their content isn't reaching people, but because the money those people are willing to spend keeps getting lost somewhere between a buyer's card and a creator's account. That was the uncomfortable truth sitting at the center of a recent panel at Moonshot by TechCabal, where the founders of Selar, Mainstack, and Raenest gathered to talk about what's actually blocking creator income across the continent.
Ayobami Oyaleke, founder and CEO of Mainstack, a commerce platform and financial back office for creators operating in around 150 countries, put it plainly: an audience is revenue waiting to be collected. "As much as you have the audience, there's a revenue path for you," he said. His platform is built on the idea that every creator is global from the start, so that a first $100 from a buyer abroad doesn't vanish because of a payment failure. But he was honest about the limits of any tool: "Tools only give you the pipe. You're still the one running the volume."
Douglas Kendyson started Selar in 2016 after hearing from people at Paystack who wanted to sell digital products online but were being quoted ₦150,000 for a basic website and dealing with payments that simply didn't work. Nearly a decade later, Selar is bootstrapped, profitable, and has paid out more than ₦18 billion, roughly $12.9 million, to close to 400,000 creators. Kendyson was clear about what Selar won't do: find customers for creators, which he described as "a very tasking thing." Instead, the platform's affiliate network, which lets marketers sell a creator's product for a commission, now brings in more revenue than its subscriptions.
Sodruldeen Mustapha, co-founder and CTO of Raenest, which helps African freelancers get paid from clients abroad, framed the whole conversation around control. African creators are already exporting their talent, he argued. Their earnings should follow without friction, collected from anywhere, in any currency, and fully in the creator's hands once they arrive.
All three founders kept circling back to the same gap. A creator in Lagos can wake up with followers in Europe and the United States on day one. The money those followers send takes a far harder road. Fixing that road, not the content, not the audience, is where the real work is.
Originally published by TechCabal.