Bonjour,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
- YouTube makes monetisation harder
- Nigeria brings crypto further into tax net
- Airtel Kenya secures 25-year operating licence
YouTube makes monetisation harder
YouTube is about to make it twice as hard for new creators to qualify for its main monetisation programme. Starting February 1, 2027, creators applying to the YouTube Partner Programme (YPP) will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 valid public watch hours in the previous 12 months or 20 million Shorts views in 90 days. That doubles the current 4,000-hour requirement and the 10 million Shorts-view route. The change won’t affect creators who are already in YPP.
In other words, getting a channel to the point where YouTube starts sharing ad revenue will now take a lot more work. The subscriber bar stays at 1,000, but the real jump is in watch time and Shorts views. YouTube is also changing the rules for Shorts: creators who are already earning from the Shorts Creators Pool will need to keep hitting 10 million Shorts views every 90 days to continue earning from Shorts. If they fall below that, they stay in YPP and can still earn from long-form videos, but Shorts revenue pauses until they hit the threshold again.
The move matters because YouTube has spent years lowering the barrier for smaller creators, not raising it. In June 2023, it introduced an earlier YPP entry point: creators could qualify with 500 subscribers, three public uploads in 90 days and either 3,000 watch hours or 3 million Shorts views. That opened access to features such as fan funding and Shopping, while the higher 1,000-subscriber/4,000-hour threshold remained for ad-revenue sharing. So the new announcement isn’t really YouTube taking away every monetisation route from small creators; it is making the full earning route considerably harder.
There is also some context around what YouTube is trying to clean up. In July 2026, the platform tightened its explanation of its rules around “inauthentic content”, specifically targeting low-quality, repetitive material, including the growing flood of AI-generated content. Raising the entry requirements fits into that broader push: YouTube appears to want creators who can demonstrate sustained audience interest rather than channels that hit a few viral numbers and immediately qualify for monetisation. And with Shorts generating enormous volumes of viewing, the platform is also putting more pressure on creators to consistently attract audiences.
For creators, particularly those just starting out, the message is pretty simple: the YouTube monetisation game is getting tougher from 2027. Someone starting today has until January 31, 2027, before the new requirements kick in, while existing YPP creators aren’t being pushed out by the change. It also makes the distinction between being popular and building a sustainable channel more important: one viral Short may get you millions of views, but the new rules require either a much larger Shorts audience or thousands of hours of sustained long-form viewing.
Nigeria brings crypto further into tax net
The big news is that Nigeria has now released formal guidelines for taxing virtual assets, giving crypto users, exchanges, peer-to-peer operators, and other players a clearer idea of what the government expects from them. The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) and Joint Revenue Board (JRB) announced the guidelines on August 10, 2026, saying they cover registration, reporting, record-keeping, valuation, and the tax treatment of virtual-asset transactions. So, after years of crypto sitting in a somewhat complicated space within Nigeria’s financial system, the government is now putting more concrete rules around its tax treatment.
Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer
Techpoint Digest
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What this means is that crypto activity is no longer something taxpayers can treat as being outside the tax system simply because it happens digitally. The guidelines are designed to spell out how the existing tax laws apply to virtual assets, including how transactions should be valued and reported. The Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, says virtual assets are to be valued using the prevailing market price at the time of a transaction, based on a recognised virtual-asset exchange approved by the Service. It also places reporting and record-keeping responsibilities on virtual asset service providers (VASPs), including maintaining customer transaction and identification records.
This could change how Nigeria’s huge crypto market interacts with the taxman. For users, the important question is no longer whether crypto gains can be taxed, but how those gains and transactions are calculated and reported. For exchanges and P2P platforms, there are now clearer compliance expectations around customer information, transaction records and reporting. And for the government, it is another attempt to bring a sizeable part of the digital economy into the formal tax base. Earlier in February 2026, tax authorities acknowledged that crypto was taxable under the new regime but that the lack of detailed, sector-specific guidance was creating uncertainty for investors and fintech operators.
The build-up goes back to 2025, when Nigeria passed a major overhaul of its tax system. President Bola Tinubu signed the new tax laws in June 2025, including the Nigeria Tax Act and Nigeria Tax Administration Act, with the reforms taking effect on January 1, 2026. The new framework explicitly brought profits or gains from digital or virtual-asset transactions into the tax net. Then, in June 2026, the Federal Government issued transition guidelines explaining how taxpayers would move from the old tax regime to the new one. What was still missing, however, was the more detailed playbook for virtual assets. Today’s guidelines appear to fill that gap.
Interestingly, Nigeria is moving from recognising crypto to actively administering it as part of the tax system. That doesn’t necessarily mean every crypto transaction is simply slapped with a new tax; rather, the guidelines provide the administrative framework for determining what is taxable and what taxpayers and VASPs must do. It also shows how Nigeria’s approach to crypto has evolved: from the Central Bank’s 2021 restrictions on banks dealing with crypto to the SEC’s regulation of digital assets and now a much more explicit tax and reporting framework. For an industry that has long operated with plenty of uncertainty, this announcement gives businesses and users something they have been asking for: clarity, even if that clarity also comes with more compliance.
Airtel Kenya secures 25-year operating licence
Airtel Kenya has finally got something it has been waiting years for: a 25-year operating licence. On August 7, 2026, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) granted the country’s second-largest mobile operator a long-term, technology-neutral licence under the revised Unified Licensing Framework. It might sound like routine regulatory paperwork, but it gives Airtel something telecom companies badly need when planning billion-shilling infrastructure projects: certainty. Instead of wondering what happens when a temporary approval expires, Airtel now has a 25-year runway to invest in fibre, enterprise connectivity, digital financial services, satellite connectivity and AI-ready infrastructure.
And the timing is interesting. Airtel is already expanding beyond the traditional mobile business. It has entered Kenya’s fixed broadband market with fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-business services, while its Nxtra by Airtel unit is building a 44MW AI-ready data centre campus in Tatu City, scheduled for completion in 2027. It is also waiting for regulatory approval to launch SpaceX’s Direct-to-Cell satellite service in Kenya. Meanwhile, Airtel Money is expanding its payments offering and preparing a mobile-money overdraft product. So the 25-year licence isn’t just about keeping Airtel’s SIM cards working; it gives the company a much longer horizon to build out a broader digital infrastructure business.
Telecom infrastructure takes years and serious capital to build, whether you’re talking about fibre networks, spectrum, mobile infrastructure or data centres. A short-term or uncertain licence makes it harder to justify those investments. With Airtel now on the same long-term licensing footing as Safaricom, which received its own 25-year licence earlier in 2026, Kenya’s two biggest mobile operators have more regulatory certainty. That could matter as competition shifts beyond voice and data into cloud, enterprise connectivity, fintech, fibre, AI infrastructure and satellite services.
But this licence has been a long time coming. Airtel’s original operating licence expired in 2015, after which the company continued to operate under successive regulatory arrangements, including rights related to its 2014 acquisition of YuMobile. In 2022, Airtel and the Communications Authority reached an out-of-court settlement that paved the way for renewal of the expired licence through 2025. When that period ended, Airtel received another temporary extension running until January 2027 while the regulator worked through the country’s revised licensing framework. The August 7 approval finally replaces those temporary arrangements with one 25-year licence.
Kenya is moving its two largest mobile operators from years of temporary or transitional arrangements to a long-term licensing model, just as the country’s digital economy enters another investment cycle. Airtel’s parent group has also recently increased its effective stake in Airtel Africa to more than 79%, giving it greater financial flexibility. With Kenya being one of Airtel Africa’s most important markets, the company now has the regulatory certainty to make bigger, longer-term bets there. The question is no longer whether Airtel can keep operating in Kenya; it is what it can build with the next 25 years secured.
In case you missed them
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What I’m watching
- The rise of the post-literate society | DW News
- Is Gen Z trapped by AI? | BBC News
Opportunities
- Moniepoint is hiring for over 100 roles. Apply here.
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Have a lovely Tuesday!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa
