Ugandans Report Making Millings of Shillings From X Payouts

Kampala– A wave of screenshots showing dollar earnings that convert to millions of Uganda shillings has been sweeping X timelines in recent weeks, drawing curiosity and excitement from creators who are only now realising that the platform pays its users directly.

The earnings are genuine. Accessing them, however, remains a serious problem for most Ugandan creators.

Among the most talked-about cases is @roxie_ug, known on the platform as The Charity Guy, whose humanitarian-focused content has earned him a large and loyal following. He recently posted that X paid him $2,542 over 56 days, the equivalent of approximately 9.5 million shillings. His account has become one of the most frequently cited examples in local discussions about creator payouts, with earlier posts showing bi-weekly accruals in the $980 to $1,185 range.

@Johnlaban256, who goes by Mwami, has been at the centre of spreading these stories within the Ugandan online community. His threads regularly highlight local accounts pulling in figures that cross $1,000 per cycle, including one viral post in which he referenced a Ugandan creator earning the equivalent of UGX 11 million from X payouts.

Activist and journalist @KwikirizaNova has gone further, sharing screenshots from multiple Ugandan accounts showing earnings well above $1,000 in bi-weekly and monthly periods. In one widely shared thread, he posted dashboard receipts from several creators describing their figures as earnings accumulated in just 15 days, with totals ranging from $1,000 to over $2,000.

Other screenshots circulating in the community show single-cycle accruals of around $1,200, roughly 4.5 million shillings, from accounts that many of their followers had not previously associated with high earnings.

How the program works

X’s Creator Revenue Sharing program distributes a portion of advertising revenue to eligible creators based on engagement from Premium subscribers. To qualify, a creator must accumulate at least five million organic impressions within 90 days, maintain an active X Premium subscription, and have a minimum of 500 followers. Payouts are processed every two weeks, and only impressions from verified Premium users count toward earnings.

This means that a large following alone does not guarantee significant income. The Ugandan creators seeing the strongest figures are those whose content consistently generates replies and discussions among Premium subscribers, the metric X weighs most heavily in its calculations.

The central frustration for Ugandan creators is that while the earnings are real and visible on their dashboards, they largely cannot be withdrawn. X routes all creator payments through Stripe, and Stripe does not currently support direct transfers to Ugandan bank accounts.

Creators who have managed to access their money have done so by registering Stripe accounts in countries where the service is supported, or by moving funds through third-party intermediaries. Both routes involve additional steps, fees, and in some cases legal and tax complications.

The issue has become a recurring theme in community conversations about X monetisation in Uganda, with many creators and commentators calling on Stripe to expand its coverage to include the country. Until that happens, the millions of shillings showing up on Ugandan creator dashboards are, for most, earnings they can see but cannot spend.