Yes. Nigeria is eligible for the YouTube Partner Programme, and Shorts revenue sharing runs through that programme. If you have just found out that TikTok does not include Nigeria in its Creator Rewards Programme, this is the contrast that matters: on the same phone, posting the same vertical video, YouTube will pay you and TikTok will not.
That is the good news. The rest of this post is the honest version of it, because Shorts pays badly per view everywhere in the world, and worse in Nigeria than almost anywhere.
Can Nigerian creators actually join the YouTube Partner Programme?
Yes. Nigeria is on the list of countries where the YouTube Partner Programme is available, and Shorts monetisation is part of that programme rather than a separate scheme you apply to.
This is the single biggest difference between the two platforms for a Nigerian creator. TikTok does not include Nigeria in its Creator Rewards Programme, so Nigerian TikTok creators earn through brand deals, live gifts, affiliate links and their own products instead of a platform payout. We wrote about that in full in does TikTok pay Nigerian creators.
On YouTube, the payout exists. The question is only how much.
How does Shorts revenue sharing work?
Shorts does not work the way long form does, and the difference is worth understanding before you look at any number.
On long form video, ads are placed directly on your video. The revenue from those ads is attributed to that video, and you keep 55% of it at the time of writing.
On Shorts, ads run between videos in the Shorts feed, not on your specific Short. YouTube pools that ad revenue, sets aside a portion to cover music licensing, then distributes what remains to creators according to each creator's share of total Shorts views. You keep 45% of what is allocated to you at the time of writing.
| Shorts | Long form | |
|---|---|---|
| How ads are sold | Pooled across the Shorts feed | Placed directly on your video |
| Music licensing | Taken out of the pool before creators are paid | Not deducted this way |
| Creator share | 45% of allocated revenue | 55% of ad revenue |
| Counts toward YPP | 10 million valid public views in 90 days | 4,000 valid public watch hours in 12 months |
| Realistic role | Reach and audience building | Actual income |
Both figures are current at the time of writing. YouTube has changed revenue terms before and can change them again.
What are the YouTube Partner Programme thresholds?
At the time of writing you need 1,000 subscribers, plus one of the following:
- 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months, or
- 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days
The word doing the work in both lines is "valid". Views and hours have to be public, and they have to be real. Private and unlisted videos are not public, and anything YouTube judges to be artificial does not count. If you are working through the requirements in detail, see YouTube monetization requirements in Nigeria.
Ten million views in 90 days sounds impossible until you realise that a single Short that travels can carry a large part of it. For a creator who posts short video daily and gets one or two hits, the Shorts route into the programme is genuinely faster than grinding out 4,000 watch hours.
How much do Shorts actually pay per 1,000 views?
This is where you should be sceptical of everything you read, including this.
YouTube does not publish a Shorts RPM. Third party estimates commonly put it somewhere around $0.01 to $0.06 per 1,000 Shorts views. Treat that as an estimate from outside the company rather than a rate you can plan around, because it is exactly that.
Even at the top of that estimated range, the arithmetic is sobering. A million Shorts views is not life changing money. That is not a Nigeria problem. That is how the Shorts pool works for everyone.
Why does the same view pay less in Nigeria?
Because advertisers pay less to reach a Nigerian viewer than an American one, and ad revenue is what funds the whole thing.
Reported CPM figures put Nigeria at roughly $2.50 to $2.89, against roughly $32 to $36 in the United States. Sources vary, but the direction and the rough scale are consistent across them: rates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Germany commonly run 5 to 10 times higher than Nigeria, Brazil or India.
| Viewer location | Reported CPM |
|---|---|
| Nigeria | around $2.50 to $2.89 |
| United States | around $32 to $36 |
Same video. Same effort. Roughly ten times the money, depending only on where the person watching happens to be sitting. If that gap interests you, it is the entire subject of selling to a diaspora audience as a Nigerian creator.
What else can a monetised channel earn from?
Super Thanks is available on Shorts for channels already in the Partner Programme, with no extra subscriber threshold on top at the time of writing. It lets a viewer pay you directly for a video they liked. For a Nigerian channel with viewers abroad, a direct viewer payment can be worth far more than the ad revenue that same viewer generates, because the person paying is not being valued at a Nigerian CPM.
Beyond the platform, brand deals are the other income route worth building toward. See how many followers you need for brand deals in Nigeria.
So what should a Nigerian creator actually do?
Use Shorts as the door and long form as the room.
Shorts get you found. The 10 million views in 90 days route is a real path into the Partner Programme, and short video reaches people who would never click a fifteen minute upload. But it pays poorly per view, and in Nigeria it pays poorly twice over.
Long form is where the money is. Direct ad placement, a 55% creator share, and viewers who stay long enough for a sponsor to care. Once Shorts has built the audience, move that audience to longer videos and let those videos carry the earnings.
One note on growth, and one warning
If your channel is new and the problem is that nobody has found it yet, Nitro lists YouTube subscribers and Shorts views among around 229 tested services, paid in naira through any Nigerian bank or wallet.
The warning matters more than the mention. Do not use promotion to chase a monetisation threshold. YouTube counts valid public views only, artificial views are the thing it screens for hardest, and a channel that gets flagged during a Partner Programme review has a much bigger problem than a slow subscriber count. Promotion is for early visibility on content nobody has seen. The threshold has to be earned by the videos.