How these Kenyan creatives mint millions from AI

Provoke had been experimenting with early forms of AI-powered tools for more than 24 years as a sound engineer.

“Most people only began experiencing AI at a consumer level in the last three years. But some of us had been interacting with it for much longer. The only real difference now is the speed of advancement. These tools keep getting sharper and more powerful.” he says.

First encounter

Provoke traces his first encounter with AI to early 2000.

“In early 2000 an AI tool in music called Flute Loops launched that could pre-record or sample from older song melodies, harmony, beats and rhythm to create a specific vibe or melody in a new song. Only that many didn't think it was AI. They used to trash it saying the music it made was crap. But fast forward to these days and 90 percent of the songs out there aren't produced from computer hardware and software as we used to do back then,” he notes.

Having worked on several hit songs in earlier eras of Kenyan music, Provoke notes that even before AI exploded, quiet micro-economy gigs around it had already taken shape.

“About two years before AI went mainstream, people were already doing gigs called AI training. Many of them probably didn’t fully understand the technology itself, but they were still earning from it,” Provoke points out.

To exploit the opportunity he had noticed, Provoke, approached the technology with a producer’s instinct for experimentation.

Having watched how rapidly AI systems learn from interaction, he began deliberately training different tools to mirror his professional instincts, especially in areas like audio production and graphic design.

“Every time you interact with AI, it absorbs the data you feed it. It learns from that input and with any new data, it trains itself, and improves continuously.”

Prompt engineering

He started pushing AI beyond simple prompts, feeding it increasingly complex creative challenges.

“AI is like that brilliant friend who can help you think further. The mistake many people make, especially with what I see with tools like ChatGPT, is asking it to do things they already know how to do.”

For Provoke he treats AI like an assistant for the impossible.

“I train it to tackle problems beyond my own execution. Things that would normally take days of researching or experimenting. I push it to the brink. When you do that, you make the system stronger and it starts producing robust results that are far better than what you could achieve alone. And that also gives you an edge over the next person”

To illustrate his point, he gives an example of music.

“In music you have generative AI and Assistant AI. With generative anyone can go online and prompt it to create music and it will deliver some result but not the best result. But with Assistive AI tools which I highly recommend, you create something to the best of your capability based on your knowledge and experience and only ask it to enhance and make it better. That way you will have the best result.”

So, how does he make money from AI?

“First, it’s from what I have always done, music. With the knowledge and experience I already have, AI simply makes the process faster. I can now produce quality sounds in a much shorter time. If a project took a week or a month before, I can now finish it in a few days. That means I’m able to take on more production jobs. And the more projects you handle, the more money you make.”

But tapping into that efficiency has required serious investment. Provoke says he spends heavily on premium AI tools, which unlock advanced features that free versions often limit.

“Every month I spend between $1,000 to $1,200 (Sh128,000 to Sh154,000) on premium AI packages. That’s the only way to access the full suite of tools so you can experiment, test ideas and really push what they can do.”

Over the past three years alone, the bill has gradually stacked up.

“In total, I’ve spent more than $10,000 (Sh1.3 million) on AI subscriptions and I don't regret that, I have made my money back and more,” he chuckles.

Besides music, Provoke also makes his money as an AI consultant for a commercial agency.

“Currently I am part of an AI production agency. Since I have a deep understanding on AI execution and experience primarily in the creative production field, I marry the two and that is what people now pay me for when they need my expertise. I have actually been doing a lot of audio and visuals adverts for the Nigerian market,” Provoke reveals.

One of his recent adverts for a client involved 50 people he created using AI.

“It was an Ad for a financial institution in Nigeria. So we were doing the calculation of what the actual cost of that Ad would have been had the client gone the traditional way. First, it would have been to hire the 50 plus people without factoring the other overheads. Then it would have taken probably weeks to shoot, edit and have the final product. In a nutshell if they had gone the traditional way, the client could have spent $100,000 (Sh13 million) but I produced it with about a third of that price, that is Sh4.3 million.”

With the use of the advanced paid- for AI features, and a proper creative command he poses, Provoke says that it is nearly impossible to tell if a production he has worked on is AI or not.

“That’s the point where I now prove to clients my understanding of AI. Otherwise why would anyone want to pay me if anyone can do it. This kind of product we offer is still a new product, very few of us are doing proper AI content generation.”

Besides the initial fees paid for the production of the adverts, Provoke also collects further income from licensing fees of the Ad.

“Because this is an original concept created by me, that means I have claim to the content, as an IP asset (Intellectual Property). So with that, we enter into agreement with the client who pays a licensing fee for the usage of the content for, let’s say, three years and once that time lapse the client can choose to renew the licence.’’

Heavy investments that pay off

“I spend about $1,000 (Sh128,000) on different AI tools every month, to help my customers build different marketing solutions and strategies. And I can't spend such an amount if there isn't a return,” says Nyandia Gachago, a Chartered Marketer and Digital Content strategist.

With that kind of spend, she gets access to a number of AI tokens that are never available on the free version, to experiment with and that has only helped improve her output to her clients needs.

Her clients include universities and corporates.

“Another thing is that, because of that heavy investment I put on different AI tools, it has put me on the radar of very many international AI brands. Lovable and Gama are some of the brands I have worked with.”

Although AI began to achieve widespread popularity in 2022, it began being mainstream around 2021. At the time, Ms Gachago had already set her career path into the world of tech, content and marketing.

“I had resigned from my previous job in the IT department of a university in 2019, then Covid-19 hit. By then, some of us were already better prepared for the digital world than many others. When physical shops and markets closed, brands suddenly found themselves scrambling to move online. We helped them make that transition, guiding them into the digital space and while at it we scaled properly,” she says.

Staying ahead of the curve

According to Ms Gachago, for anyone who was in the tech industry, the rise in popularity of AI, didn't come as a shocker.

“What I came to realise is that there is a group of people who think AI is a new technology. But it isn’t. For those of us who were already in tech, we had long been working with automation,” she says.

She explains that many of the tools marketers and digital content strategists relied on were already capable of analysing brand sentiment, generating storytelling scripts, among other functions.

“The difference today is that these tools are now becoming agentic and fully automated end-to-end.”

In simple terms, she says, agentic AI means that a single instruction can trigger a chain of actions across multiple tools.

“A good example would be when I receive an email from a client and my inbox is linked to AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Canva, an image generator, as well as platforms like Metricool, WhatsApp and Google Sheets. From that email, if a client needs a poster, I may not even need to interact with it directly. The system can reply to the client in a tone I have already trained it to use. It can then move to ChatGPT or Gemini to generate the text for the poster, create the image using Google’s Nano Banana in Gemini, take the content to Canva and design the poster.”

The only time she will interact with the poster is when sending the final product to the client.

“It sends me a pin of the finished poster on WhatsApp asking if it is okay to send it to the client. If I reply ‘yes’, it automatically sends the email to the client.”

She maintains that such a level of execution needs someone with a diverse knowledge on AI.

“With AI every tool needs a tool master. For example, to create a good poster, you will need to understand design to be able to play with 10 AI design tools.”

Building virtual businesses

For, Oduor Jagero, host of the Dialogues with Jagero Podcast, he had been navigating the digital economy for more than 10 years when AI got mainstream. He didn’t hesitate to embrace it.

“I spend about $300 (Sh38,500) every month on premium AI tools,” he says. “I have worked online for more than 10 years, and I can tell you there are countless jobs on the internet that many people simply don’t know about, including AI-related ones.”

In 2024, he distilled those experiences into a book, Digital Goldmine, a guide drawn from more than a decade of working in the digital space.

“In the book, I outline 18 online side hustles for Africans, including AI-driven opportunities that most people are unaware of. A lot of people panic and say AI will take away their jobs, but I believe that is false. In fact, AI is creating many new ones.”

According to the podcaster, one such path is becoming a virtual or executive assistant for clients abroad.

“You can work as an executive assistant for busy professionals in Europe, Canada or the United States and enhance your work using AI tools. You can build an entire virtual assistant business and refine your services with AI assistants,” he explains.

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