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Okafor, Nigerian YouTuber who makes films with smartphones

By Eniola Daniel
11 August 2019   |   3:24 am
Eric Okafor, popularly known as Knewkeed, a technology focused content creator and influencer, has made a name for himself by reviewing smartphones on the video sharing platform, YouTube.

Eric Okafor

Eric Okafor, popularly known as Knewkeed, a technology focused content creator and influencer, has made a name for himself by reviewing smartphones on the video sharing platform, YouTube.

The 29-year-old YouTuber recently celebrated 50,000 subscribers on the platform during the first ever YouTube Bootcamp in Nigeria. He began producing and sharing unboxing videos on YouTube in 2015, thereafter, quit his job in 2016, and since then, has achieved a wide audience of over 9 million.

Okafor’s self titled channel is currently the biggest tech YouTube Channel in West Africa.When asked what this figure means to him, he replied: “It means that millions of people are watching me talk about smartphones, influencing and making buying decisions based on my opinions. It’s daunting, yet inspiring.”

His video titled, ‘Huawei Y9 2019 unboxing and review’ had over 1.7 million views in seven months, a feat that skyrocketed his YouTube channel to the global map. On why he chose smartphone instead of camera for filming, he had this to say: “Inspiring people to create content with a smartphone has become an essential part of my brand. It wasn’t enough to just talk about how much people could achieve with mobile devices, it’s better to show them. If I can do it with a smartphone, anyone can do it.”

Apart from being one of the most sought-after YouTubers, Okafor is the co-founder of HowToTechNaija.com, a blog that solves consumer tech issues. Okafor is the highest earning Tech YouTuber in Nigeria from Google Adsense. “It wasn’t my intention to make money from YouTube to begin with and I’m constantly in a state of gratitude. However, complacency is the death of YouTube growth and I will do everything in my power to match the quality and consistency of my counterparts across the globe,” he said.

He hopes to be listed as one of the top tech YouTubers around the world in the next five years.

In his words, “the two top challenges of being a full time YouTuber in Nigeria is power supply and high data charges. With unstable power supply comes generator noise, the number one enemy of clean audio output. This forces me to record only after midnight on the off chance that power is restored. The high cost of data and scarcity of WiFi in public places even makes it a lot harder for my content to reach a majority of my target audience in the country, which is young adults.”

In the course of his career, Okafor has been associated with Global brands like Intel, Google and Huawei. His YouTube fame has earned him a growing fanbase on Twitter and Instagram.

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