Three Kenyan podcasts have made it into Spotify's top 10 podcasts in Africa.
The global online streaming platform, which has over four hundred active users, made the announcement on its Spotify Africa page on X to mark this year's International Podcasting Day.
The three Kenyan podcasts are The Sandwich Podcast, hosted by Joan, Kibz, Nyamita and Owen; The Messy Inbetween, hosted by Murugi Munyi and Lydia Karleen Mukami, popularly known as Lydia K.M; and So This Is Love, hosted by Julia Gaitho.
The Sandwich Podcast is fast paced and colourful, featuring a mix of personalities with exciting and varied discussions, driven by both the speakers' opinions and pop culture, with witty and candid conversations on various things going on around them. It also features interviews with celebrities and influencers, as well as political leaders such as Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja, who was a guest a month ago.
According to the streaming platform, The Sandwich Podcast is the most popular in Kenya with over 100,000 monthly listeners and over 20,000 followers on Instagram.
The Messy Inbetween, hosted by Murugi Munyi and Lydia Karleen Mukami, popularly known as Lydia K.M, is a podcast about life as it is – messy. Launched two years ago and with 53 episodes to date, the hosts share their experiences and opinions on love, work, money, relationships, friendships and everything in between.
In a previous conversation with Nation, the hosts said their aim is to be relatable, honest and empowering to their over 50,000 monthly listeners and 100,000 followers on Instagram, especially young women.
Julia Gaitho, who hosts the So This Is Love podcast, describes it as "a podcast about love, loss of love, heartbreak and meeting of self".
The 20 episodes of the podcast feature stories from different people about how the relationships they once had teach them about who they are and define who they are becoming.
The podcast also explores whether it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The podcast has over 30,000 monthly listeners and over 5,000 followers on Instagram.
The three podcasts were also among the 13 African podcasts selected for Spotify's Sound Up programme in 2022, which aimed to support emerging podcasters from underrepresented communities on the continent. The programme provided the podcasters with training, mentorship and funding to develop their skills and grow their audiences.
Spotify's podcast manager for sub-Saharan Africa, Ncebakazi Manzi, said the growth of podcast listeners on the continent has been exponential in recent years.
“In Nigeria for instance, which is ranked second after South Africa in podcast consumption, there was a 222 percent increase in listeners between 2021 and 2022. These two countries are followed by Kenya, Ghana and Angola.”
Mr Manzi said that Generation Z (Gen-Zs), aged 18 to 26, were at the forefront of this change, accounting for 50 percent of total streams. He added that Gen-Zs are revolutionising the podcasting landscape with their appetite for diverse content and shaping the future of audio entertainment.
Other podcasts on the list include True Crime South Africa, a podcast that investigates South Africa's most notorious crimes and criminals; Wisdom and Wellness with Mpoomy Ledwaba, a podcast that offers practical tips and advice on how to live a healthy and balanced life; I Said What I Said, a podcast that features candid conversations between two Nigerian sisters on topics ranging from pop culture to politics; and After School Is After School with Sis G.U, a podcast that discusses issues affecting young people in Zimbabwe, such as education, careers and relationships.
Others are: Your Mum with Schalk, a comedy podcast featuring South African comedian Schalk Bezuidenhout and his hilarious interactions with his mother; Menisms, a podcast that explores masculinity and men's issues in Nigeria from a male perspective; and, It's Related I Promise, a podcast that connects seemingly unrelated topics such as history, science, art and culture in an entertaining and informative way.
